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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 



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ENGLISH CONFERENCES 



EEINTEST EEE"A]^. 



ROME AND CHRISTIANITY. 

MARCUS AURELIUS. 



TRANSLATED SY 

CLARA EESKINE CLEMENT. 




i1 




BOSTON : 
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY. 

1880. 






Copyright, 1880, 
By JAMES R. OSaOOD & COMPANY. 



Franklin Press: 

Stereotyped and Printed by 

Rand, Avery ^ 6^ Co., 

Boston, 



OOE"TEKTS. 



PAGE. 

The Hibbeet Conterences. 

First Conference, The Sense in which Christianity 
is a Eoman Work 9 

Second Conference, The Legend of the Eoman 
Church. —Peter and Paul 39 

Third Conference. Kome, the Centre of the Forma- 
tion of Ecclesiastical Authority .... 73 

Fourth Conference, Kome, the Capital of Catholi- 
cism . 103 

The Royal Institution Conference. 

Marcus Aurelius • . . 139 



NOTE. 

The lectures contained in this volume were delivered by 
M. Eenest Kenan in London during April of the present 
year. The first four, upon ^'Rome and Christianity," were 
given under the auspices of *^ The Hibbert Foundation," in 
response to an invitation under which the distinguished 
author visited England. The fifth, '' Marcus Aurelius," was 
incidental to the visit, and was given before " The Royal 
Institution." The word ^* Conferences," though somewhat 
new to English usage in its present sense, has been retained 
as best expressing the author's original title, '' Conferences 
d^Angleterre.^' 



EOME AIsTD OHEISTIAITITY. 



FIRST CONPEREJSrOE, 
London, Apeil 6, 1880. 



THE SENSE IN WHICH CHEISTIANITY IS 
A ROMAN WORK. 



FIRST CONFERENCE. 

THE SENSE I]^ WHICH CHEISTIAKITY IS A 
EOMAK WOEK. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, — I was proud and 
happy to receive from the curators of this noble 
institution an invitation to continue here an in- 
struction inaugurated by my illustrious confrere 
and friend, Max Miiller, the usefulness of which 
will be more and more appreciated. A broad and 
sincere thought always bears fruit. It is thirty 
years since the venerable Robert Hibbert made a 
legacy for the purpose of aiding the progress of 
enlightened Christianity, inseparable, according to 
his idea, from the progress of science and reason. 
Wisely carried out, this foundation has become, in 
the hands of intelligent administrators, the centre 
of conferences upon all the great chapters of 
the history of religion and humanity : the pro- 
moters of this reform have asked, with reason, 
why the method which has proved good in all 
departments of intellectual culture should not also 
be good in the domain of religion? why the pur- 
suit of truth, without regard to consequences, 

9 



10 ENGLISH COXFERENCES. 

should be dangerous in theology, when it is ap- 
proved of in the entire domain of social and 
natural science ? You believed the truth, gentle- 
men, and 3^ou were right. There is but one truth ; 
and we are wanting in respect to its revelation, 
if we allow that the critic ought to soften his 
severe processes when he treats of it. No, gentle- 
men, the truth is able to dispense with compli- 
ments. I come gladly at your call ; for I under- 
stand the duti^ towards the right exactly as you 
do. With you, I should believe that I injured a 
faith in admitting that it required to be treated 
with a certain softness. I believe with you that 
the worship due from man to the ideal consists in . 
independent scientific research, without regard to 
results, and that the true manner of rendering 
homage to the truth is to pursue it without ceas- 
ing, with the firm resolution of sacrificing all to it. 
You desire that these conferences shall present a 
great historic ensemble of the efforts which the hu- 
man race has made to resolve the problems which 
surround it, and affect its destiny. In the present 
state of the human mind, no one can hope to 
resolve these problems : we suspect all dogmatism 
simply because it is dogmatism. We grant will- 
ingly that a religious or philosophical sj^stem can, 
indeed, or that it ought to, enclose a certain por- 
tion of truth ; but we deny to it, without exam- 
ination, the possibility of enclosing the absolute 



HOME AND CHRISTIANITY. 11 

truth. What we love is history. History well 
written is always good; for, even if it should 
prove that man in seeking to seize the infinite has 
pursued a chimera, the history of these attempts, 
more generous than successful, will always be use- 
ful. It proves, that, in reality, man goes beyond 
the circle of his limited life through his aspira- 
tions. It shows what energy he has expended for 
the sake of his love of the good and true ; it 
teaches us to estimate him, — this poor disinherited 
one, who, in addition to the sufferings which na- 
ture imposes upon him, imposes still further upon 
himself the torture of the unknown, the torture of 
doubt, the severe resistances of virtue, the absti- 
nences of austerity, the voluntary sufferings of the 
ascetic. Is all this a pure loss? Is this unceasing 
effort to attain the unattainable as vain as the 
course of the child who pursues the ever flying 
object of his desire ? It pains me to believe it ; 
and the faith which eludes me when I examine 
in detail each of the systems scattered throughput 
the world, I find, in a measure, when I reflect upon 
all these systems together. All religions may 
be defective and incomplete ; religion in humanity 
is nothing less than divine, and a mark of superior 
destiny. No, they have not labored in vain — those 
grand founders, those reformers, those prophets of 
all ages — who have protested against the false 
evidences of gross materialism, who have beaten 



12 ENGLISH COXFEREXCES. 

themselves against the wall of the apparent fa- 
tality that encloses us ; who have^ employed their 
thought, given their life, for the accomplishment of 
a mission which the spirit of their age had imposed 
upon them. If the fact of the existence of the 
martyrs does not prove the exclusive truth of this 
or that sect (all sects can show a rich martyrology), 
this fact in general proves that religious zeal re- 
sponds to something mysterious. All, — as many 
as we are, — we are sons of martyrs. Those who 
talk the most of scepticism are frequently the most 
satisfied and indifferent. Tliose who have founded 
among you religious and political liberty, those 
who have founded in all Europe liberty of thought 
and research, those who have labored for the 
amelioration of the fate of men, those who will 
doubtless find means for further amelioration, 
have suffered, or will suffer, for their good work ; 
for no one is ever recompensed for what he does . 
for the good of humanity. JS'evertheless they 
will always have imitators. There will always 
b^ some to carrv on the work of the incor- 
rigibles ; some, possessed of the divine spirit, who 
will sacrifice their personal interest to truth and 
justice. Be it so : they have chosen the better 
part. I know not what assures me that he who, 
without knowing why, through simple nobility of 
nature, has chosen for himself in this world the 
essentially unproductive lot of doing good, is the 



HOME AiS^D CHKISTIANITY. 13 

true sage, and has discovered the legitimate use of 
life with more sagacity than the selfish man. 



You have asked me to retrace before you one 
of those pages of religious history which places 
the thoughts which I come to express in their 
fullest aspect. The origins of Cliristianity form 
the most heroic episode in the history of humanity. 
Man never drew from his heart more devotion, 
more love of the ideal, than in the one hundred 
and fifty years which elapsed from the sweet 
Galilean vision, under Tiberius, to the death of 
Marcus Aurelius. The religious consciousness 
was never more eminently creative, and never 
laid down with more authority the law of the 
future. This extraordinary movement, to which 
no other can be compared, came forth from the 
bosom of Judaism. But it is doubtful if Judaism 
alone would have conquered the world. It was 
necessary that a young and bold school, coming 
out of its midst, should take the audacious part 
of renouncing the largest portion of the Mosaic 
ritual. It was necessary, above all, that the new 
movement should be transported into the midst of 
the Greeks and Latins, while awaiting the Barba- 
rians, and become like yeast in the bosom of those 
European races by which humanity accomplishes 



14 ENGLISH CONFERENCES. 

its destinies. What a beautiful subject he will 
discourse upon who shall one day explain to you 
the part which Greece took in that great common 
work! You have commissioned me to show to 
you the part of Rome. The action of Rome is 
the first in date. It was scarcely until the begin- 
ning of the third century that the Greek genius, 
with Clement of Alexandria and Origen, really 
seized upon Christianity. I hope to show you, 
that, since the second century, Rome has exercised 
a decisive influence upon the Church of Jesus. 

In one sense, Rome has diffused religion through 
the world, as she has diffused civilization, as she 
has founded the idea of a central government, 
extending itself over a considerable part of the 
world. But even as the civilization which Rome 
has diffused has not been the small, narrow, 
austere culture of ancient Latium, but in fact 
the grand and large civilization which Greece 
created, so the religion to which she definitely 
lent her support was not the niggardly supersti- 
tion which was sufficient to the rude and primitive 
inhabitants of the Palatine : it was Judaism, that 
is to say, in fact, the religion which Rome scorned 
and hated most, that which two or three times 
she believed herself to have finally vanquished to 
the profit of her own national worship. This an- 
cient religion of Latium, which contented a race 
endowed with narrow intellectual wants and mor- 



BOME AISTD CHRISTIANITY. 15 

als, among which customs and social rank almost 
held the place of a religion during some centuries, 
was a sufficiently despicable thing. As M. Bois- 
sier has perfectly proved, a more false conception 
of the divinity was never seen. In the Roman 
worship,* as in most of the ancient Italiote wor- 
ships, prayer was a magic formula, acting by its owtl 
virtue, independent of the moral dispositions of 
him who prayed. People prayed only for a selfish 
end. There exist some registers called indigita- 
menta^ containing lists of the gods who supply all 
the wants of men ; thus there was no need of being 
deceived. If the god v/as not addressed by his 
true name, by that under which it pleased him to 
be invoked, he was capable of misapprehension, 
or of interpreting capriciously. Now these gods, 
who are in some degree the forces of the world, 
are innumerable. Tliere was a little god who 
made the infant utter his first cry ( Vaticcmus) ; 
there was another who presided over his first 
word QFabuliniio) ; another who taught the baby 
to eat QEducct) ; another who taught him to drink 
(^Patina) ; another who made him keep quiet in 
his cradle (^Cubd). In truth, the good wife of 
Petronius was right, when, in speaking of the 
Campagna, she said, "This country is. so peopled 
with divinities, that it is easier to find a god than 
a man." Besides these, there were unending series 
of allegories, or deified abstractions. Fear, the 



16 EXGLISH COXEEEEXCES. 

Cough, Fever, Manly Fortune, Patrician Chastity, 
Plebeian Chastity, the Security of the Age, the 
Genius of the Customs (or of the octroi)^ and 
above all (listen, that one who, to say the truth, 
was the great ^^ocl of Rome), the Safety of the 
Roman People. It was a civil religion in the full 
force of the term. It was essentially the religion 
of the State. There was no priesthood distinct 
from the functions of the State: the State wtis 
the veritable god of Rome. The father had there 
the right of life and death over his son; but if 
this son had the least function, and the father 
met him in his path, he descended from his horse, 
and bent himself before him. 

The consequence of this essentially political 
character was^ that the Roman religion remained 
always an aristocratic religion. A man became 
pontiff as he became praetor or consul. When a 
man desired these religious functions, he submitted 
to no examination ; he went into no retreat in a 
seminary ; he did not ask himself whether he had 
the ecclesiastical vocation : he proved that he 
had served his country well, and that he had been 
wounded in a certain battle. There was no sacer- 
dotal spirit. These civil pontiffs remained cold, 
practical men, and had not the least idea that 
their functions should separate them from the 
world. The religion of Rome is, in every respect, 
the inversion of theocracy. Civil law rules acts : 



HOME AND CHRISTIANITY. 17 

it does not trouble itself with thoughts ; thus did 
the Roman religion. Rome never had the least 
idea of dogma. The exact observation of the 
rites commanded by the divinity, in which it did 
not regard piety or the sentiments of the heart, if 
the request was in form, was all that Avas re- 
quired. Even more, — devotion was a fault ; calm- 
ness, order, regularity, only, were necessary : more 
than that was an excess (^superstitio^. Cato ab- 
solutely forbade that a slave should be allowed 
to conceive any sentiment of piety. " Know," 
said he, " that it is the master who sacrifices for 
all the household." It was not needful to neglect 
what was due to the gods ; but it was not needful 
to give them more than was due : that was super- 
stition, of which the true Roman had as much hor- 
ror as of impiety. 

Was there ever, I ask you, a religion less capable 
of becoming the religion of the human race than 
that ? Not only was the access to the priesthood 
for a long time forbidden to the plebeians, but 
they were also excluded from the public worship. 
In the great struggle for civil equality which fills 
the history of Rome, religion is the great argu- 
ment with which the revolutionists are opposed. 
''How," say they, ''could you become a praetor 
or consul ? You have not the right to take the 
omens." Above all, the people were very little 
attached to religion. Each popular victory was 



18 ENGLISH CONFEKENCES. 

followed, as one may say, by an anti-clerical 
re-action : on tlie contrary, the aristocracy re- 
mained always faithful to a worship which gave a 
diyine sanction to its privileges. 

The matter became still more -pressing when the 
Roman people, by their manly, patriotic virtues, 
had conquered all the nations upon the borders of 
the Mediterranean. What interest, think you an 
African, a Gaul, a Syrian, took in a worship which 
concerned only a small number of high and often 
tyrannical families? The local religions were 
continued everywhere ; but Augustus, who was 
still more a religious organizer than a great politi- 
cian, made the Roman idea to hover everywhere 
by the establishment of the Roman worship. The 
altars of Rome and of Augustus became the centre 
of a hierarchical organization of Flamens and 
Augustan Sevirs^ who served to found, more than 
one imagines, the divisions of the dioceses and 
ecclesiastical provinces. Augustus admitted all 
the local gods as Lares ; he allowed more than the 
number of Lares in each house ; at each cross-road 
an additional Lare was placed, — the Genius of the 
Emperor. Thanks to this fellowship, all the local 
gods and all the special gods became '' Augustan 
gods." It was a great advance. But this grand 
attempt of the worship of the Roman State was 
notoriously insufficient to satisfy the religious » 
needs of the heart. There was elsewhere a god 



BOME-AKD CHRISTIANITY. 19 

who could not accommodate himself in any way 
to this fraternity: it was the God of the Jews. 
It was impossible to maie Jehovah pass for a 
Lare, and associate with the Genius of the Emper- 
or. It was evident that a conflict must be es- 
tablished between the Roman State and this 
unchangeable and refractory God, who did not 
bend to the complaisant transformations exacted 
by the politics of the times. 

Ah, well ! behold the most extraordinary histori- 
cal phenomenon, the most intense irony of all 
history: it is that the worship which Rome has 
diffused through the world is not in the least the 
old worship of Jupiter Capitolinus, or Latiaris, 
still less the worsliip of Augustus and of the 
Genius of the Emperor : it is, in truth, the worship 
of Jehovah. It is Judaism in its Christian form 
that Rome has propagated, without wishing it, in 
so powerful a manner, that, from a certain epoch, 
Romanism and Christianity have become almost 
synonymous words. 

Truly, I repeat it, it is more than doubtful if 
pure Judaism — that which is developed under the 
Talmudical form, and which is still in our day so 
powerful — would have had this extraordinary 
fortune. Judaism propagates itself through Chris- 
tianity. But one understands nothing of religious 
history (some one, I hope, will demonstrate it to 
70U some day), unless it is fixed as a fundamental 



20 ENGLISH COXFEEE^'CES. 

principle that diristianity liad its origin in Juda- 
ism itself, — Judaism with its fruitful principles 
of alms and charit}^, with, its absolute confidence 
in the future of humanity, with that joy of the 
heart of which it has always had the secret, — 
only Judaism freed from some observances and 
distinctive traits which had been invented to char- 
acterize the special religion of the children of 
Israel. 

II. 

If one studies in fact the progress of the primi 
tive Christian missions, he remarks that they are 
all directed towards the West: in other words, they 
take the Roman Empire as their theatre and limit. 
If one excepts some small portions of the vassal 
territory of the Arsacid^e, lying between the Eu- 
phrates and the Tigris, the empire of the Parthi- 
ans received no Christian missions during the first 
century. The Tigris was an eastern boundary 
which Christianity did not pass under the Sassani- 
dae. Two great causes — the Mediterranean and 
the Roman Empire — determined this capital fact. 

The Mediterranean had been, during a thousand 
years, the great route on which all civilizations 
and all ideas had passed each other. The Romans, 
having freed it from piracy, had made it an un- 
equalled way of communication. It was in a sense 
the railroad of that time. A numerous marine of 



ROME AND CHEISTIANITY. 21 

coasting-vessels rendered the voyages along tlie 
borders of this great lake very easy. The relative 
security which the routes of the empire afforded, 
the sure guaranties found in the public powers, the 
scattermg of the Jews over all the coasts of 
the Mediterranean, the use of the Greek tongue 
in the eastern portion of this sea, the unity of 
civilization which the Greeks first, and then the 
Romans, had created, made the map of the empire 
also the map of the countries reserved to the 
Christian missions and destined to become Chris- 
tian. The Roman oj^his became the Christian oj^bis 
in the sense in which it may be said that the 
founders of the empire were the founders of the 
Christian monarchy, or, at least, that they have 
drawn its outlines. Every province conquered by 
the Roman Empire became a province conquered 
by Christianity. Let the figures of the apostles 
be imagined in the presence of Asia Minor, of 
Greece, of Italy divided into a hundred little re- 
publics, of Gaul, of Spain, of Africa, of Egypt, 
with its old national institutions, and their success 
can no more be thought of, or rather it would 
seem that their project could never have had birth. 
The union of the empire was the necessary pre- 
liminary condition of all great religious propagan- 
dism, placing it above nationalities. The empire 
recognized this in the fourth century. It became 
Christian. It saw that Christianity was the reli- 



22 ENGLISH CONFERENCES. 

gion which it had accepted without knowing it, — 
the religion limited by its frontiers, identified with 
it, capable of bringing it a second life. 

The Church, on its side, made itself entirely 
Roman, and. has remained to this day a fragment of 
the empire. During the middle ages the Church 
was the old Rome, seizing again its authority oyer 
the barbarians, imposing on them its decretals, as 
formerly it had imposed its laws, governing them 
by its cardinals, as it had before governed through 
its imperial legates and proconsuls. 

In creating its vast empire, Rome imposed, then, 
the material condition of the propagation of Chris- 
tianity. She raised up, above all, the moral state 
which served as an atmosphere and a medium for 
the new doctrine. While destroying politics every- 
where, it created what may be called socialism and 
religion. At the close of the frightful wars which 
for some centuries had rent the world, the empire 
had an era of prosperity and of welfare such as 
it had never known : we may even be permitted 
to add (without a parardox) liberty. Liberty of 
thought, at least, increased under this new regime. 
This liberty is often more prosperous under a 
king or a prince than under the jealous and nar- 
row-minded plebeian. The ancient republics did 
not have it. The Greeks did great things with- 
ou.t it, thanks to the incomparable power of their 
genius ; but it must not be forgotten that Athens 



ROME AND CHKISTIAKITY. 23 

had a fine and noble Inquisition. The king Archon 
was the inquisitor ; the royal Portico was the holy 
affice in which the accusations of impiety were 
adjudged. These were the cases in which the 
Attic orators were most frequently engaged. Not 
only philosophical crimes, such as the denial of 
God or of a Providence, but the lightest attaint 
of the municipal worship, the preaching of strange 
religions, the most puerile infractions of the scru- 
pulous legislation of the mysteries, were crimes 
guilty of death. The gods whom Aristophanes 
mocked on the stage sometimes destroyed. They 
destroyed Socrates ; they failed to kill Alcibiades. 
Anaxagoras, Protagoras, Diagoras of Melas, Prodi- 
cus of Ceos, Stilpo, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Aspa- 
sia, Euripides, were more or less seriously dis- 
turbed. Liberty of thought was, in truth, the 
fruit of the royalties resulting from the Macedo- 
nian conquest. It was the Attali, the Ptolemies, 
who first gave to men of thought the freedom 
which no one of the old republics had ever offered 
therd. The Roman Empire held to the same tra- 
ditions. There was under the empire more than 
one arbitrary law against the philosophers; but 
these always resulted from their meddling with 
political affairs. In the laws of the Romans, before 
the time of Constantine, no clause is found against 
the liberty of thought ; in the history of the em- 
perors, no process of abstract doctrine. No savant 



24 ENGLISH CONFERENCES. 

was disturbed in his researches. Men whom the 
middle ages would have burned, such as Galen, Lu- 
cian, PlotinuvS, lived tranquilly, protected by law. 
The empire inaugurated a period of liberty in the 
sense that it destroyed the absolute sovereignty 
of the family, the city, the tribe, and replaced 
or modified these sovereignties by those of the 
State. Now, an absolute power is as much more 
vexatious as the circle in which it is exercised is 
more narrow. The ancient republics, the feudali- 
ties, tyrannized over the • individual much more 
than did the State. Unquestionably the Roman 
Empire persecuted Christianity severely at times ; 
but at least it did not destroy it. Now the repub- 
lics would liaA^e rendered it impossible. Judaism, 
if it had not been under the Roman authority, 
would have stifled it. It was the Roman magis- 
trates who hindered the Pharisees from killing 
Christianity. Some lofty ideas of universal 
brotherhood — results, in the main, of stoicism, ^ — 
a sort of general sentiment of humanity, were the 
fruit of the least narrow regime and of the least 
exclusive education to which the individual was 
submitted. The people dreamed of a new era and 
new worlds. The public riches were great ; and, 
in spite of the imperfection of the economical 
doctrines of the time, there was general comfort. 

General customs were not such as are often ima- 
gined. It is true, that, in Rome, all the vices were 



BOME AKD CHRISTIANITY. 25 

publicly displayed with a revolting cynicism : the 
spectacles, above all, had introduced a frightful 
corruption. Certain countries, as Egypt, had de- 
'scended to the lowest baseness. But there existed 
in most of the provinces a middle class, in which 
goodness, conjugal fidelity, the domestic virtues, 
and uprightness were commonly practised. Does 
there anywhere exist, in a world of honest people 
in small villages, an ideal of family life more 
charming than that which Plutarch has left us? 
What good fellowship ! What sweetness of man- 
ners ! What chaste and attractive simplicity ! 
Chseronea was evidently not the only place where 
life was so pure and so innocent. 

The customs, even outside of Rome, were still 
somewhat cruel, either through the remaining 
spirit of ancient manners, everywhere sanguinary, 
or through the special influence of Roman harsh- 
ness. But there was progress during this period. 
What sweet and pure sentiment, what feeling of 
melancholy tenderness, has not found expression 
by the pen of Virgil or of TibuUus? The world 
unbent, lost its ancient severity, and acquired 
some softness and tenderness. Some maxims for 
humanity were spread abroad. Equality and the 
abstract idea of the rights of man were boldly 
preached by stoicism. Woman became more and 
more the mistress of herself. The precepts for the 
treatment of slaves were improved. The slave was 



26 ENGLISH CONFEEENCES. 

no longer that necessarily grotesque and wicked 
being whicli the Latin comedy introduced in order 
to provoke bursts of laughter, and whom Cato 
recommended to be treated as a beast of burden. 
Now, times are much changed. The slave is mor- 
ally equal to his master: it is admitted that he 
is capable of virtue, of fidelity, of devotion, and 
he gives proofs of it. The prejudices concerning 
noble birth grow less. Some very humane and just 
laws are made, even under the worst emperors. 
Tiberius was a skilful financier : he founded upon 
an excellent basis an establishment of credit fon- 
der. Nero inaugurated in the system of taxation, 
until then unjust and barbarous, some improve- 
ments which shame even our own time. Legisla- 
tion was considerably advanced, while the punish- 
ment of death Avas stupidly prodigal. Love of the 
poor, sympathy for all, and almsgiving, came to be 
considered virtues. 

III. 

IJKQUESTioisrABLY I understand and share the 

indignation of sincere liberals against a govern- 
ment which diffused a frightful despotism over the 
world. But is it our fault that the wants of hu 
inanity are diverse, its aspirations manifold, its 
aims contradictory? Politics is not every thing 
here below. What the world desired, after those 
frightful butcheries of the earlier centuries, was 



ROME AND CHRISTIANITY. 27 

gentleness, humanity. They had enough of hero- 
ism : those vigorous goddesses, eternally brandish- 
ing their spears on the height of the Acropolis, 
inspired sentiment no longer. The earth, as in 
the time of Cadmus, h^ swallowed her most noble 
sons. The proud Grecian races had killed each 
other. The Peloponessus was a desert. The 
sweet voice of Virgil gently took up the cry of 
humanity, peace, pity ! 

The establishment of Christianity responded to 
this cry of all tender and weary souls. Chris- 
tianity could only have had birth and expansion 
in a time when there were no longer free cities. 
If there was any thing totally lacking in the 
founders of the Church, it was patriotism. They 
were not cosmopolites, for the entire planet was to 
them a place of exile : they were idealists in the 
most absolute sense. 

A country is a composition of soul and body. 
The soul is the souvenirs, the legends, the cus- 
toms, the misfortunes, the hopes, the common 
sorrows : the body is the soil, the race, the lan- 
guage, the mountains, the rivers, the characteristic 
productions. Now, was a people ever more want- 
ing in all this than the first Christians? They 
did not cling to Judaea ; after a few years they had 
forgotten Galilee ; the glory of Greece and Rome 
was indifferent to them. The countries in which 
Christianity was first established — Syria, Cyprus, 



28 ENGLISH CONFERENCES. 

and Asia Minor — no longer remembered the time 
when they were free. Greece and Rome, it is 
true, still had a grand national sentiment. At 
Rome, patriotism survived in a few families; in 
Greece, Christianity flourished only at Corinth, — a 
city which, since its destruction by Mummius, and 
its reconstruction by Caesar, was the resort of men 
of all races. The true Greek countries, then, as 
to-day, very jealous, very much absorbed in the 
memories of their past, gave little countenance to 
the new doctrines : they were always lukewarm 
Christians. On the contrary, those gay, indolent, 
voluptuous countries of Asia and Syria, countries 
of pleasure, of free manners, de laisser aller^ accus- 
tomed to receive life and government from others, 
had nothing to resign in the way of pride and 
traditions. The most ancient capitals of Christi- 
anitj^ — Antioch, Ephesus, Thessalonica, Corinth, 
and Rome — were common cities, so to speak, cities 
of the modern type of Alexandria, in which all 
races met, where that marriage between man and 
the soil, which constitutes a nation, was absolutely 
broken. 

The importance given to social questions is 
always the inverse of political pre-occupations. 
Socialism takes the lead when patriotism grows 
weak. Christianity exploded the social ' and re- 
ligious ideas, as was inevitable, since Augustus 
had put an end to political struggles. Christian- 



EOME AND CHRISTIANITY. 29 

ity, if a universal worship, would, like Islamism, 
in reality be the enemy of nationalities. Only 
centuries, only schisms, could form national 
churches from a religion which was from the be- 
ginning a denial of all terrestrial countries, which 
had its birth at an epoch in which there were no 
longer in the world either cities or citizens, and 
which the old and powerful republics of Italy and 
of Greece would surely have expelled as a mortal 
poison to the State. 

And here was one of the causes of the grandeur 
of the new religion. Humanity is a multiform, 
changeable thing, tormented by conflicting desires. 
La patrie is grand, and the heroes of Marathon 
and Thermopylae are saints. But one's country 
is not all here below : one is a man and a son of 
God, before he is a Frenchman, or a German. 
The kingdom of God, an eternal dream which is 
never destroyed in the heart of man, is a protes- 
tation against a too exclusive patriotism. The 
thought of an organization of humanity, in view 
of its greatest happiness and its moral ameliora- 
tion, is legitimate. The State knows, and can 
only know, one thing, — to organize a collective 
egoism. This is not indifference, because egoism 
is the most powerful and seizable of human 
motives, but is not sufficient. The governments 
which have rested upon the supposition that man 
is composed of covetous instincts only, have de- 



30 ENGLISH CO]SrrERE]^CES. 

ceived themselves. Deyotion is as natural as 
egoism to a true-born man. The organization of 
devotion is religion: let no one hope, then, to 
dispense with religion, or religious associations. 
Each progression of modern society will render 
this want more imperious. 

A great exaltation of religious sentiment was, 
then, the consequence of the Roman peace estab- 
lished by Augustus. Augustus realized it. But I 
ask, What satisfaction could the institutions which 
Rome dared to believe eternal present to the re- 
ligious wants which were arising ? Surely almost 
nothing. All the old worships, of very different 
origin, had one common trait. They shared 
equally the impossibility of reaching a theological 
teaching, a practical morality, an edifying preach- 
ing, a pastoral ministry truly fruitful for the 
people. The Pagan temple, in its best time, was - 
the same thing as the synagogue and the church : 
I wish to say the common house, the school, the 
inn, the hospital, the shelter in which the poor 
sought an asylum, it was a cold eella^ into which one 
seldom entered, where one learned nothing. Tlie 
affectation which led the Roman patricians to dis- 
tinguish the " religion," that is to say, their own 
worship, from the '' superstition," that is to say, 
the worship of strangers, appears to us puerile. 
All the Pagan worships were essentially supersti- 
tious. The peasant who in our day places a sou 



BOME AND CHEISTIANITY. 31 

in the box of a miraculous chapel, who invokes 
some saint on account of his oxen, or his horses, 
who drinks certain waters for certain maladies, is 
in these acts a Pagan. Indeed, nearly all our 
superstitions are the remains of a religion anterior 
to Christianity, which that has not been able to 
entirely uproot. If one would find the image of 
Paganism in our day, it must be sought in some 
obscure village in the depth of some out-of-the- 
way country. 

Having as guardians a popular, vacillating tra- 
dition, and selfish sacristans, the Pagan religion 
could but degenerate in worship. Augustus, al- 
though with a certain reserve, accepted the ado- 
ration of his subjects in the provinces. Tiberius 
allowed, under his own eyes, that ignoble con- 
course of the cities of Asia to dispute the honor 
of raising a temple to him. The extravagant un- 
pieties of Caligula produced no re-action : outside 
of Judaism there was not found a single priest to 
resist such follies. Coming forth, for the most 
part, from a primitive worship of natural forces 
ten times transformed by minglings of all sorts, 
and by the imagination of the peoples, the Pagan 
worships were limited by their past. One could 
never draw from them what had never existed in 
them, — Deism or instruction. The fathers of the 
church amuse us when they bring to notice the 
misdeeds of Saturn as the father of a family, and 



32 ENGLISH co:n^ferexces. 

of Jupiter as a husband. But- without doubt it 
was still more ridiculous to set up Jupiter (that 
is to say, the atmosphere) as a moral god who 
commands, defends, rewards, and punishes. In 
a world which aspires to possess a catechism, 
what could one do with a worship like that of 
Venus, which arose from an old social necessity 
of the first Phoenician navigation in the Mediter- 
ranean, but became in time an outrage to that 
which one regards more and more as the essence 
of religion? 

Here is the explanation of that singular attrac- 
tion, which, towards the commencement of our era, 
drew the populations of the Old World towards the 
worships of the East. These worships had some- 
thing more profound than the Greek and Latin 
worships : they appealed, moreover, to the religious 
sentiment. Almost all were relative to the state 
of the soul in another life, and they were believed 
to contain some pledges of immortality. From 
this arose that favor which the Thracian and Sa- 
basian mysteries enjoyed, the worshippers of Bac- 
chus, and brotherhoods of all sorts. There was less 
of coldness in these little circles, in which one 
pressed against another, than in the great glacial 
world elsewhere. Some minor religions, like that 
of Pysche, destined solely to console for death, 
had immense popularity. Those noble Egyptian 
worships which concealed the emptiness within 



EOISIE AND CHRISTIANITY. 83 

by grand splendor of ceremonies counted their 
devotees throughout the empire. Isis and Serapis 
had their altars at the extremities of the world. 
In visiting the ruins of Pompeii, one would be 
tempted to believe that the worship of Isis was 
the principal one practised there. Those little 
Egyptian temples had some assiduous devotees, 
among whom were counted a large number of per- 
sons of the class of the friends of Catullus and 
TibuUus. There was a service each morning, — a 
sort of mass, celebrated by a tonsured and beard- 
less priest; there were some sprinklings of holy 
water, and perhaps an evening service: it occu- 
pied, amused, and quieted. What more is neces- 
sary ? 

But, more than all others, the Mithraic worship 
enjoyed in the second and third centuries an 
extraordinary popularity. I sometimes allow my- 
self to say, that, had not Christianity taken the 
lead, Mithraicism would have become the religion 
of the world. Mithraicism had mysterious re- 
unions, and chapels which strongly resembled 
little churches. It established a very solid bond 
of brotherhood between its votaries; it had the 
Eucharist, the Lord's Supper, and bore such a 
resemblance to the Christian mysteries, that the 
good Justin the Apologist saw only one explana- 
tion of these resemblances: it is that Satan, in 
order to deceive the human race, sought to mimic 



34 ENGLISH CONFERENCES. 

the Christian ceremonies, and committed this 
plagiarism. The Mithraic tomb of the Catacombs 
of Rome is as edifying and deeply mysterious as 
the Christian tombs. There were some devoted 
Mithraists, who, even after the triumph of Christi- 
anity, defended the sincerity of their faith with 
courage. The people grouped themselves around 
these foreign gods : around the Greek and Italiote 
gods there were no gatherings. We must say a 
good word for it : it is only the small sects that lay 
the foundation and build up. It is so sweet to 
believe one's self a little aristocracy of truth, to 
imagine, that, in common with a yqyj few, one 
owns the repository of truth! Such a foolish sect 
in our own time gives to its adherents more conso- 
lation than a more healthy philosophy.' In his day, 
Abracadabra secured some joyous followers, and, 
by means of a little good-will, a sublime theology 
has been found in him. 

We shall see, however, in our next conference, 
that the religious reign of the future belonged 
neither to Serapis, nor to Mithra. The predes- 
tined religion grew imperceptibly in Judaea. This 
would have greatly astonished the most sagacious 
Romans, if had been announced to them. It 
would have been shocking to them in the highest 
degree. But so often in history have improbable 
predictions become true, so often has wisdpm been 



EOME AND CHRISTIAKITY. 85 

mistaken, that it is not best to rely too much 
upon the likes and dislikes of enlightened men, of 
bons esprits as we say, when they undertake to 
predict the future. 



SEOOlNrD COI>fFEEENOE, 

London, Apeil 9, 1880. 



THE LEGEND OF THE EOMAN CHURCH. 
PETER AND PAUL. 



SECOND CONFERENCE. 

PETER AND PAUL. 

Ladies atstd Gentlemen, — At our last meeting 
we attempted to show the situation of the Roman 
Empire in regard to religious questions during the 
first century. There was in the vast gathering of 
populations which composed the empire a pressing 
want of religion, a true moral progress, which 
called for a pure worship without superstitious 
practices or bloody sacrifices ; a tendency to Mon- 
otheism, which made the old mythological recitals 
appear ridiculous ; a general sentiment of sympa- 
thy and of charity, which inspired the desire of 
association, of assembling together for prayer, for 
support, for consolation, for the assurance that 
after death one would be interred by his brethren, 
who would also make a little feast in his memory. 
Asia Minor, Greece, Syria, and Egypt contained 
masses of the poor, — very honest men, after their 
manner, humble, and without distinction ; but re- 
volted at the spectacle which the Roman aristoc- 
racy made, full of horror at those hideous represen- 
tations in the theatres, in which Rome made a 

39 



40 ENGLISH COKFEEENCES. 

diversion of suffering. The moral conscience of 
the human race sent up an immense protestation, 
and there was no priest to interpret it, no pitying 
God to reply to the sighs of poor suffering hu- 
manity. Slavery, in spite of the protestations of 
the sages, remained very cruel. Claudius thought 
to do a grand and humane act in making a law 
that the master who should drive from his house 
an old and sick slave should lose his right in that 
slave, if he were cured. How could gods without 
compassion, and born of joy and the primitive 
imagination, be expected to console for such 
evils? A Father in heaven was required, who 
kept a record of the efforts of man, and promised 
him a recompense. A future of justice was de- 
sired, in which the earth belonged to the feeble 
and the poor. The assurance was necessary, that, 
when a man suffered, it was not an entire loss, and 
that beyond those sad horizons, veiled by tears, 
there were happy fields in which one day he should 
console himself for his sorrows. Judaism indeed 
had all that. By the institution of the syna- 
gogues (do not forget, gentlemen, that it is from 
the synagogue that the church comes), it estab- 
lished association in the most powerful form in 
which it had ever been realized. In appearance, 
at least, the worship was pure Deism ; no images, 
only scorn and sarcasm for idols. But that which 
above all characterized the Jew was his confidence 



EOME AInTD CHETSTIAXITY. 41 

in a brilliant and liappy future for humanity. 
Having no idea based upon the immortality of the 
soul, nor upon the remunerations and punish- 
ments beyond the tomb, the Jew, disciple of the 
ancient prophet, was as if intoxicated with the 
sentiment of justice : he wished justice now npon 
earth. Having little confidence in the assurances 
of the eternity which made the Christians so easily 
resigned, the Jew grumbled at Jehovah, reproached 
him with his ignorance, and demanded how he 
could leave the earth so long in the power of the 
impious. As for himself, he did not doubt that 
the earth would one day be his, and that his law 
would make love and justice to reign therein. 

In this struggle, gentlemen, the Jew will be vic- 
torious. Hope, that which the Jew calls the Tiqva^ 
that assurance of something which nothing proves, 
but to which one attaches himself with so much 
the more frenzy because it is not sure, is the soul 
of the Jew. His psalms were like the continuous 
sound of a harp, filling life with harmony and a 
melancholy faith : his prophets held the words -of 
eternity. For example, that second Isaiah, the 
prophet of the captivity, pictured the future with 
more dazzling colors than man had ever seen in 
his dreams. The Thora, besides that, gives the 
recipe for being happy (for being happy here 
below, I mean), by observing the moral law, the 
spirit of the family, and the spirit of duty. 



42 ENGLISH CONFEEEKCES. 



The establisliinent of the Jews at Rome dated 
nearly sixty years before Jesus Christ. They 
multiplied rapidly. Cicero represented it as an 
act of courage to dare to oppose them. Caesar 
favored them, and found them faithful. The peo- 
ple detested them, thought them malevolent, ac- 
cused them of forming a secret society whose mem- 
bers were advanced at any price, to the detriment 
of others. But all did not approve these super- 
ficial judgments. The Jews had as many friends 
as detractors : something superior was noticeable 
in them. The poor Jewish colporter of the Tras- 
tevere often in the evening returned home rich 
with the charities received from a pious hand. 
Women, above all, were attracted by these mission- 
aries in rags. Juvenal counts the weakness to- 
wards the Jewish religion among the vices of the 
ladies of his time. The word of Zachariah was 
verified to the letter: the world seized upon the 
garments of the Jews, and said, " Lead us to Jeru- 
salem." 

The principal Jewish quarter of Rome was 
situated beyond the Tiber, that is to say, in the 
poorest and dirtiest part of the city, probably 
near the present Porta Portese. There, or rather 
opposite to the foot of the Aventine, the gate of 
Rome was formerly situated, where the merchan- 



EOME AND CHRISTIANITY. 43 

dise brought from Ostia in barges was discharged. 
It was a quarter of Jews and Syrians, — " nations 
born for servitude," as Cicero said. The nucleus 
of the Jewish population at Rome was formed, in 
truth, of freedmen, descended, for the most part, 
from those prisoners whom Pompey had carried 
there. They had passed through slavery, without 
changing their religious customs in the least. That 
which is admirable in Judaism is that simplici- 
ty of faith which makes the Jew, transported a 
thousand leagues from his country, at the end of 
several generations, always a very Jew. The in- 
tercourse between the synagogues of Rome and 
Jerusalem was continual. The first colony had 
been re-enforced with numerous emigrants. These 
poor men disembarked by hundreds at the Ripa, 
and lived together in the adjacent quarter of the 
Trastevere, serving as street-porters, engaged in 
small affairs, exchanging matches for broken 
glasses, and showing to the proud Italiote popula- 
tions a type which later became too familiar to 
them, — that of the beggar accomplished in his art. 
A Roman who respected himself never placed his 
foot in these abject quarters. It was as a suburb 
given up to despised classes and to infectious em- 
ployments : the tanneries, the gut-works, the rot- 
ting vats were banished there. These unhappy 
people lived tranquilly enough in this remote 
corner, in the midst of bales of merchandise, low 



44 ENGLISH CONFERENCES. 

inns, and porters of manure (^Syri)^ who had there 
their general headquarters. The police only en- 
tered there when affrays were bloody, or occurred 
too often. Few quarters of Rome were so free*: 
politics had nothing to do there. Worship was 
not only practised there in ordinary times without 
obstacles, but its propagation was also accom- 
plished with great facility. 

Protected by the disdain which they inspired, 
caring little, moreover, for the railleries of the 
men of the world, the Jews of the Trastevere 
led a very active religious and social life. They 
had some schools of hakamin : nowhere was the 
ritual and ceremonial of the law observed more 
scrupulously: the organization of the synagogue 
was the most complete ever known. The titles of 
''father and mother " of the synagogues were much 
prized. Some rich converts took biblical names ; 
they brought their slaves into the church with 
them, they had the Scriptures explained by the 
doctors, built places of prayer, and manifested 
their pride of the consideration which they en- 
joyed in this little world. The poor Jew found 
the means, while begging with a trembling voice, 
to whisper in the ear of the great Roman lady 
some words of the law, and frequently won over 
the matron who opened to him her hand full of 
small coin. To observe the sabbath and the 
Jewish feasts was to Horace the trait which 



EOME AND CHRISTIANITY. 45 

classed a man in the crowd of weak minds. The 
universal benevolence, the happiness of reposing 
with the just, the assistance of the poor, the 
purity of manners, the gentle acceptance of death 
considered as a sleep, are some of the sentiments 
which are found in the Jewish inscriptions, with 
that particular accent of touching unction, of 
certain hope, which characterizes the Christian 
inscriptions. There have been many rich and 
powerful Jews in the world, such as Tiberius 
Alexander, who arrived at the greatest honors of 
the empire, who exercised two or tliree times the 
strongest influence upon public affairs, and even 
had, to the great grief of the Romans, his statue 
in the Forum ; but those were not' good Jews. 
The Herods, though practising their worship at 
Rome with much show, were also far from being 
true Israelites, even if their only sins were their 
relations with the Pagans. 

A world of ideas was thus set in motion on the 
vulgar quay where the merchandise of the whole 
world was piled up ; but all that would be lost in 
a great city like Paris. Undoubtedly the proud 
]3atricians, who, in their promenades on the Aven- 
tine, cast their eyes upon the other side of the 
Tiber, did not imagine the future that was form- 
ing itself in that little cluster of poor houses at 
the foot of Janiculum. 

Near the port was a sort of lodging-house well 



46 ENGLISH co:n^febences. 

known to the people and the soldiers under the 
name of Taherna Meritoria, In order to attract 
the loungers, a pretended spring of oil coming out 
of a rock was shown there. From a very early 
time this spring of oil was considered by the 
Christians as symbolic : it was pretended that 
its appearance was coincident with the birth of 
Jesus. It seems that later the Taherna became a 
chui'ch. Under Alexander Severus we find the 
Christians and the inn-keepers in a contest over a 
place which formerly had been public : that good 
emperor gave it to the Christians. This is proba- 
bly the origin of the Church of the Santa Maria 
of the Trastevere. 

It is natural that the capital should have fully 
accepted the name of Jesus before the intermedi- 
ate countries could be evangelized, as a high sum- 
mit is lighted up while the valleys between it and 
the sun are still obscure. Rome was the rendez- 
vous for all the Oriental worships, — the point 
upon the coast of the INIediterranean with which the 
Syrians had the most intercourse. They arrived 
there in enormous bands. Like all the poor popu- 
lations rising for the assault of the great cities to 
which they come to seek their fortunes, they were 
serviceable and humble. All the world spoke 
Greek. The ancient Roman plebeians, attached 
to the old customs, lost ground each day, drowned 
as they were in this wave of strangers. 



ROME AND CHRISTIANITY. 47 

We admit then, that towards the year 50 of our 
era, some Syrian Jews, already Christians, entered 
the capital of the empire, and communicated the 
faith which rendered them happy to their com- 
panions. At this time no one suspected that the 
founder of a second empire was in Rome, — a sec- 
ond Romulus, lodging at the port in a bed of straw. 
A little band was formed. These ancestors of the 
Roman prelates were poor, dirty, common people, 
without distinction, without manners, clothed with 
fetid garments, having the bad breath of men 
who are badly fed. Their dwellings had that 
odor of misery which is exhaled from persons 
grossly clothed and nourished, and huddled to- 
gether in narrow rooms. We know the names of 
two Jews who were the most prominent in these 
movements. They were Aquila, a Jew, originally 
from Pontus, who was like St. Paul an upholsterer, 
and Eriscilla his wife, — a pious couple. Banished 
from Rome ^hey took refuge at Corinth, where 
they soon became the intimate friends of St. Paul, 
and zealous workers with him. Thus Aquila and 
Priscilla are the most ancient know^n members of 
the Church of Rome. There is scarcely a souve- 
nir of them there. Tradition, always unjust, be- 
cause it is always ruled by political motives, has 
expelled these two obscure workmen from the 
Christian Pantheon in order to attribute the honor 
of the foundation of the Church of Rome to a 



48 ENGLISH COXFEEEKCES. 

name more in keeping with its proild pretensions. 
We do not see the original point of the origin of 
Occidental Christianity in the theatrical Basilica 
consecrated to St. Peter : it is at that ancient 
GrhettO'^ the Porta Portese. It is in tracing these 
poor vagabond Jews, who bore with them the reli- 
gion of the world, — these suffering men, dream- 
ing in their misery of the kingdom of God, — that 
we shall find it again. We do not dispute with 
Rome its essential title. Rome was probably the 
first point in the Western World, and even in 
Europe, where Christianity was established. 

But, instead of these lofty basilicas, in place of 
these insulting devices, — Christus vincit^ Christus 
regnat^ Christus imperat^ — it would be better to 
raise a poor chapel to these good Jews who first 
pronounced on the quay of Rome the name of 
Jesus. 

A capital trait, which it is important to note in 
any case, is, that the Church of Rome was not, 
like the churches of Asia Minor, Macedonia, and 
Greece, a foundation of the school of Paul. It 
was fundamentally Judsean-Christian, re-attaching 
itself directly to the Church of Jerusalem. Paul 
here will never be on his OAvn ground: he will 
find in this great church many weaknesses which 
he will treat with indulgence, but which will 
wound his exalted idealism. Attached to circum- 
cision and outward observances, Ebionite through 



BOME AND CHRISTIAISriTY. 49 

its taste for abstinences, and by its doctrine con- 
cerning the person and death of Jesus more Jewish 
than Christian, leaning strongly towards Millen- 
arianism, the Roman Church showed, since its 
first days, the essential traits which will distin-' 
guish it through its long history. Own daugh- 
ter of Jerusalem, the Roman Church will always 
have an ascetic, sacerdotal character, opposed to 
the Protestant tendencies of Paul. Peter will be 
its veritable head; then, the political and hie- 
rarchical spirit of old Rome penetrating it, it will 
indeed become the new Jerusalem, the city of the 
Pontificate, of the hieratic and solemn religion, of 
the material sacraments which justify of them- 
selves, the city of the ascetics of the manner of 
Jacques Ohliam with his callous knees and his 
plate of gold upon his brow. It will be the au- 
thoritative church. If we can believe it, the only 
mark of the apostolic mission will be to show a 
letter signed by the apostles, to produce a certifi- 
cate of orthodoxy. The good and the evil which 
the Church of Jerusalem did in giving birth to 
Christianity, the Church of Rome will do for the 
Universal Church. It is in vain that Paul will 
address to it his beautiful epistle to explain the 
mystery of the cross of Jesus and of salvation by 
faith alone. The Church of Rome will scarcely 
comprehend it ; but Luther four and a half cen- 
turies later will comprehend it, and will open a 



60 ENGLISH CONFERENCES. 

new era in a secular series of the alternate tri- 
umphs of Peter and Paul. 

II. 

An important event in the history of the world 
took place in the year 61. Paul was led a pris- 
oner to Rome in order to follow up the appeal 
which he had made to the tribunal of the em- 
peror. A sort of profound instinct had always 
made Paul desire this journey. His arrival at 
Rome was almost as marked an event in his life 
as his conversion. He believed that he had 
attained the summit of his apostolic life ; and 
doubtless he recalled the dream in which, after 
one of his days of struggle, Christ had appeared 
to him, and said, ''Be of good cheer, Paul; for 
as thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must 
thou bear witness also at Rome." 

You will not forget the wide divisions which 
separated the disciples of Jesus during the first 
century from the foundation of Christianity, — 
divisions so broad, that all the differences which 
to-day separate the orthodox, the heretics, and the 
schismatics of the whole world, are nothing beside 
the dissensions of Peter and Paul. The Church 
of Jerusalem, obstinately attached to Judaism, 
refused all intercourse with the uncircumcised, 
however pious they might be. Paul, on the con- 



EOME AND CHRISTIAKITY. 61 

trary^ thought that to maintain the ancient law 
was an injury to Jesus, since thus it might be 
supposed, that, outside the merits of Jesus, such or 
such a work could serve for the justification of 
the faithful. However strange it may appear, it 
is certain that the Judaean - Christians of Jeru- 
salem, with James at their head, organized some 
active contra-missions in order to combat the effect 
of the missions of Paul, and that the emissaries 
of these ardent conservatives followed in some 
sort the lead of the apostle of the Gentiles. Peter 
belonged to the party at Jerusalem, but showed 
in his conduct that sort of timid moderation which 
seems to have been the foundation of his character. 
Did Peter also come to Rome ? Formerly, gentle- 
men, this question was one of the most exciting 
which could be agitated. Formerly the history of 
religion was written, not to recount it, but in order 
to prove it: religious history was an annex of 
theology. During the grand revolt, so full of 
courage and of ardent conviction, which, during 
the sixteenth century, placed one-half of Europe 
in opposition to Rome, the negation of the sojourn 
of Peter at Rome became a sort of dogma. The 
Bishop of Rome is the successor of St. Peter, said 
the Catholics, and as such the head of Christen- 
dom. How could that reasoning be more strongly 
refuted than by maintaining that Peter never 
placed his foot in Rome ? 



62 ENGLISH COXFEREXCES. 

As for us, we are permitted to regard this ques- 
tion with the most perfect disinterestedness. "We 
do not telieve, in any sense, that Jesus intended 
to give any head whatever to his church ; and 
above all, it is doubtful whether the idea of such a 
church as developed later had existed in the mind 
of the founder of Christianity. The word eeclesia 
occurs only in the Gospel of St. Matthew. The 
idea of the episcopos^ as it existed in the second 
century, had no place in the mind of Jesus. He 
himself was the living episcopos during his brief 
Galilean appearance : from that time it is the 
Spirit who inspires each one until he may return. 
In any case, if it had been possible that Jesus 
should have had any idea whatever of the eeclesia 
and episcopos^ it is absolutely beyond doubt, that 
Jesus never thought of giving the future episcopos 
of the city of Rome to be the head of his church, 
— that impious city, the centre of all the impuri- 
ties of the earth, of whose existence he perhaps 
knew scarcely any thing, and of which he should 
have entertained the gloomy opinions which all 
the Jews professed. If there is any thing in the 
world which was not instituted by Jesus, it is the 
Papac}", that is to say, the idea that the Church 
is a monarchy. We are, then, perfectly at liberty 
to discuss the question of Peter's coming to Rome. 
This question is absolutely without consequence 
for us; and from our solution the only result will 



EOME AND CHRISTIAKITY. . 53 

be to say whether Leo XIII. is or is not the head 
of the Christian conscience. Whether Peter was 
or was not in Rome, it has for us no political nor 
moral bearing. It is a curious question of his- 
tory : it is useless to pursue it further. 

First, let us say, that the Catholics have laid 
themselves open to the peremptory objections of 
their adversaries by their unfortunate reckoning 
of the coming of Peter to Rome in the j^ear 42, 
— a reckoning borrowed from Eusebius and St. 
Jerome, which extends the duration of the pontifi- 
cate of Peter to twenty-three or twenty-four years. 
There is nothing more inadmissible. In order to 
leave no doubt in regard to this, it is sufficient to 
consider that the persecution of Peter at Jeru- 
salem by Herod Agrippa occurred in the year 44. 
It would be superfluous to oppose longer a thesis 
which can have no one reasonable defence. It is 
possible, in fact, to go much further, and to affirm 
that Peter had not yet come to Rome when Paul 
was taken there, that is to say, in the year 61. 
The Epistle of Paul to the Romans, written about 
the year 68, is a very considerable argument here. 
One can scarcely imagine St. Paul writing to the 
faithful, of whom St. Peter was the head, without 
making the least mention of the latter. The last 
chapter of the Acts of the Apostles is still more 
demonstrative. This chapter, especially from the 
seventeenth to the twenty-ninth verse, cannot be 



64 E:tTGLISH CONFEKENCES. 

explained, if Peter was at Rome when Paul ar- 
rived there. Let us, then, consider it absolutely 
certain that Peter did not come to Rome before 
Paul, that is to say, before or about the year 61. 

But did he not come there after Paul? This 
has never been positively proved ; this late jour- 
ney of Peter's to Rome was not only probable, 
but there are strong arguments in its favor. Be- 
sides the testimony of the Fathers of the second 
and third centuries, there are three reasons which 
do not appear to me unworthy : — 

1st, It is indisputably certain that Peter suf- 
fered a martyr's death. The testimony of the 
fourth evangelist, of Clement Romanus, of the 
fragment which is called the " Canon de Mura- 
tori^'' of Denis of Corinth, of Caius, of Tertul- 
lian, leave no doubt in this respect. Let the 
fourth Gospel be apochryphal, allow that chapter 
xxi. has been added in later times, it makes no 
difference. It is clear, that, in the verses in which 
Jesus announces to Peter that he shall die by the 
same suffering as his own, we have the expression 
of an opinion established in the Church about 120 
or 130, to which allusions are made as to a fact 
known to all. Now, it is not possible to imagine 
that Peter died a martyr outside of Rome. It 
was only at Rome, in fact, that the persecution 
of Nero was violent. At Jerusalem, at Antioch, 
the martyrdom of Peter would have been much 
less probable. 



ROME AND CHEISTIANITY. 55 

2d, The second reason is found iii the Epistle 
attributed to St. Peter (v. 13) : " The church 
that is at Babylon . . . saluteth you/' Babylon, 
in this passage, evidently indicates Rome. If the 
Epistle is authentic, the passage is decisive : if it 
is apocryphal, the conclusion to be drawn from 
the text is not weakened. The author, in short, 
whoever he may be, wishes it to be regarded as 
the work of Peter. He was consequently forced, 
in order to give an appearance of truth to his 
fraud, to arrange the circumstances which he re- 
lated, according to what he kncAV, or believed was 
known in his time, of the life of Peter. If, in 
such a spirit, he dated the letter at Rome, it 
shows, that, in his day, it was the general opinion 
that Peter had resided at Rome. But, in any case, 
the First Epistle of Peter is a very ancient work, 
and had very early a high authority. 

8d, The theory which is founded upon the 
Ebionite Acts of St. Peter is also worthy of much 
consideration. This theory represents St. Peter 
as following Simon the Magician everywhere (ac- 
cording to St. Paul), in order to dispute his false 
doctrines. M. Lipsius has shown an admirable 
critical sagacity in his analysis of this legend. 
He has shown that the base of all the different 
versions of it which have come to us was written 
about the year 130. It seems improbable that an 
Ebionite author of such early date could have 



56 ENGLISH CONFERENCES. 

given so much importance to Peter's journey to 
Rome, if this journey had not taken place in real- 
ity. The theory of the Ebionite legend must 
contain some truth at the bottom, in spite of the 
fables which are mingled with it. It is quite ad- 
missible that St. Peter might have come to Rome, 
as he went to Antioch, following St. Paul, and in 
part to neutralize his influence. The missions 
of St. Paul, and the facility which the Jews had 
acquired in their voyages had made long expedi- 
tions quite the custom. The apostle Philip is 
even represented by an ancient and persistent 
tradition as having settled himself in Hierapolis, 
in Asia Minor. 

I regard, then, as probable, the tradition of the 
sojourn of Peter at Rome ; but I believe that this 
sojourn was short, and that Peter suffered martyr- 
dom soon after his arrival in the Eternal City. 

ni. 

You know the mystery which hovers above the 
history of primitive Christianity, which we might 
desire to know more in detail. The death of the 
apostles Peter and Paul remains enveloped in a 
veil which will never be penetrated. That which 
appears the most probable is, that they both dis- 
appeared in the great massacre of Christians com- 
manded by Nero. 



EOME AND CHRISTIANITY. 67 

On the 19th of July, in the year 64, a violent 
fire burst out at Rome. It originated in that 
portion of the great Circus near to the Palatine 
and Coelian Hills. In this quarter there were 
many little shops, filled with inflammable matter, 
in which the flames spread with prodigious rapid- 
ity. Thence it made the turn of the Palatine, 
ravaged the Velabra, the Forum, the Carinse, 
ascended the hills, greatly injured the Palatine, 
descended again to the valleys, devouring compact 
quarters, and piercing tortuous streets, continuing 
six days and seven nights. An enormous pile of 
houses which were torn down near the foot of the 
Esquiline, arrested its progress for a time ; then 
it again broke out, and endured three days more. 
A considerable number of people perished. Of 
the fourteen portions which composed the city, 
three were entirely destroyed; of seven, only 
blackened walls remained. Rome was an ex- 
tremely compact city, and the population very 
dense. This disaster was frightful, and the like 
of it had never before been seen. 

When the fire broke out, Nero was at Antium. 
He returned to the city about the time when it 
approached his ''transitory" house. It was not 
possible to arrest the flames. The imperial houses 
of the Palatine, the '' transitory " house itself with 
its* dependencies, and the whole surrounding quar- 
ter, were destroyed. Nero 'did not seem much to 



58 ENGLISH CONFERENCES. 

regret the loss of his house. The sublime horror 
of the spectacle transported him. Later it was 
said that he had watched the fire from a tower, 
where, in a theatrical costume, with a lyre in liis 
hand, he chanted the ruin of Ilion to the rhythm 
of an ancient elegy. 

This was a legend, the fruit of a period of suc- 
cessive exaggerations ; but one point upon which 
the universal opinion was decisive from the first 
was, that Nero had commanded this fire, or at 
least had revived it when it seemed about to die 
out. 

These suspicions were confirmed by the fact, 
that, after the fire, Nero, under pretext of remov- 
ing the ruins at his own cost, in order to leave the 
place free to the proprietors, imdertook to clear 
away the debris; and the people were not allowed 
to approach. This seemed worse when it was 
seen that he drew from the ruins what belonged 
to the country, when the new palace, that '' golden 
house " which had been the plaything of his deli- 
rious imagination, was seen rising upon the site 
of the ancient provisory residence, enlarged by 
the spaces which the fire had cleared. 

It was believed that he had desired to prepare 
the place for his new palace, to justify the recon- 
struction which he had long contemplated, to pro- 
cure money by appropriating the wreck of the 
fire, in short, to satisfy his mad vanity, which led 



ROME AND CHRISTIANITY. 69 

him to desire to rebuild tto whole of Rome, so 
that it might date from him, and be called Ne- 
ropolis. 

All the honest men of the city were outraged. 
The most precious antiquities of Rome, the 
houses of the ancient leaders, decorated with 
triumphal spoils, the most holy objects, the tro- 
phies, the ancient ex-votos^ the most revered 
temples, all the belongings of the old worship of 
the Romans, had disappeared. It was as if they 
mourned the souvenirs and the traditions of the 
whole country. They celebrated expiatory ser- 
vices ; they consulted the books of the Sibyl : the 
ladies especially observed various piacula. But 
the secret consciousness of a crime and infamy 
still remained. 

Then an infernal idea took possession of the 
mind of Nero. He cast about to see if he could 
find anywhere some miserable wretches, still more 
detested by the Roman plebeians than himself, 
upon whom he could rest the odium of the in- 
cendiarism. He thought of the Christians. The 
horror which they testified towards the temples 
and the most venerated edifices of the Romans 
made the idea plausible, that they should have 
been the authors of tliis fire, the result of which 
was the destruction of these sanctuaries. Their air 
of sadness in regarding the monuments appeared 
like an injury to the nation. Rome was a very 



60 ENGLISH CONFEEEKCES. 

religious city, and whoever protested against the 
national worship was at once remarked. It should 
be remembered that certain rigorous Jews went 
so far as to refuse to touch money which bore an 
effigy: they even saw a great crime in bearing or 
looking at an image, unless engaged in the occu- 
pation of carving. Others refused to pass beneath 
a city gate surmounted by a statue. All this ex- 
cited the ridicule and ill-will of the people. Per- 
haps the idea that the Christians were incendiaries 
gained force from their manner of talking about 
the final conflagration, their sinister prophecies, 
their love of reiterating that the world would 
soon be ended, and ended by fire. It is even ad- 
missible that some of the faithful might have com- 
mitted imprudences, and that there were pretexts 
for accusing them of having wished, by anticipat- 
ing the celestial flames, to justify their oracles, at 
any price. Four and a half years later the Apo- 
calypse was to present a chant upon the burning 
of Rome, for which the event of 64 probably fur- 
nished more than one feature. The destruction 
of Rome by fire had been a Christian and Jewish 
dream ; and it was not merely a dream : the pious 
sectaries were pleased to see in spirit the saints 
and angels applauding from the heights of heaven 
what thej^ regarded as a just expiation. 

A certain number of persons suspected of be- 
longing to the new sect were arrested, and thrown 



ROME AND CHEISTIAKITY. 61 

into prison, which was of itself a punishment. 
The first arrests were followed by many others. 
The people were surprised at the multitude of 
converts who had accepted these gloomy doc- 
trines: it was only spoken of with alarm. All 
sensible men considered the accusation of having 
caused the fire as extremely weak. "• Their true 
crime," said they, " is hatred of the human race." 
Although persuaded that the burning was the 
crime of Nero, many serious Romans saw in this 
work of the police a mode of delivering the city 
from a dreadful nuisance. Tacitus, in spite of his 
pity, was of this opinion. And Suetonius counted 
the sufferings which Nero heaped upon the parti- 
sans of the new and mischievous superstitions as 
among his laudable measures. 

These sufferings were something frightful. Such 
refinements of cruelty had never been seen. 
Almost all those arrested were of the humiliores 
(the poorest classes). The sentence of these un- 
fortunates, when it concerned high treason or 
sacrilege, was to be thrown to the beasts, or to be 
burned alive in the amphitheatre. One of the 
most hideous traits of Roman manners was that of 
making a fete^ a public amusement, of these tor- 
tures. The amphitheatres had become places of 
execution : the tribunals furnished the victims. 
The condemned of the entire world were for- 
warded to Rome for the provisionment of the 



62 ENGLISH CONFERENCES. 

circus and the amusement of the people. * At this 
time derision was added to the barbarism of these 
tortures. The victims were kept for a feast day, 
to which was given, without doubt, an expiatory 
character. " The morning spectacle," consecrated 
to the combats of animals, presented an appearance 
hitherto unknown. The condemned, covered with 
the tawny skins of beasts, were hurried into the 
arena, where they were torn by dogs. Some were 
crucified : others, reclothed with tunics steeped in 
oil, wax, or resin, were bound to posts, and reserved 
to light up the evening fetes. When the day 
lowered, these living torches were ignited. For 
this spectacle, Nero offered his magnificent gardens 
beyond the Tiber, which occupied the site of the 
present Borgo, the Square, and the Church of St. 
Peter. Near by was a circus commenced by Cali- 
gula, in which the middle of the Spma was marked 
by an obelisk brought from Heliopolis (the same 
one which in our day stands in the centre of the 
Square of St. Peter). This place had already been 
the scene of massacres by the light of torches. 
Caligula, in one of his walks, decapitated a cer- 
tain number of consular personages, senators, and 
Roman ladies, by the light of torches. The idea 
of replacing lanterns by human bodies impreg- 
nated with inflammable substances had occurred to 
the ingenious Nero. Burning alive was not a 
new mode of suffering ; it was the ordinary pen- 



ROME AND CHRISTIANITY. 63 

ance of incendiaries : but it had never been made 
a system of illumination. By the light of these 
hideous torches, Nero, who had established the 
custom of evening entertainments, showed himself 
in the arena, sometimes mingling with the people in 
the dress of a charioteer, sometimes conducting his 
chariot and seeking applause. Women and young 
girls were involved in these horrible games : a fete 
was made of the nameless indignities which they 
suffered. Under Nero, the custom was established 
of compelling the condemned to play in the amphi- 
theatre some mythological part entailing the death 
of the actor. These hideous operas, where mechan- 
ical science attained to prodigious effects, were 
very popular. The miserable wretch w^as intro- 
duced into the arena, richly costumed as god or 
hero devoted to death. He then represented by 
his suffering some tragic scene of the fables conse- 
crated by sculptors and poets. Sometimes it was 
the furious Hercules burned on Mount QEta, tear- 
ing the waxed tunic from his skin ; sometimes 
Orpheus torn in pieces by a bear ; Daedalus thrown 
from heaven, and devoured by beasts; Pasiphse 
struggling in the embraces of the bull ; Attys 
murdered. Sometimes there were horrible mas- 
querades, in which the men were dressed like 
priests of Saturn with a red cloak, the women as 
priestesses of Ceres with fillets on the brow • 
finally, at other times, some dramatic work of the 



64 ENGLISH CONFERENCES. 

time, in which the hero was really condemned to 
death as Laureolas; or the representations were 
those of such tragic acts as that of Mucins 
Scssvola. At the end of these hideous spectacles, 
Mercury, with a red-hot iron wand, touched each 
corpse to see if it moved. Some masked valets, 
dressed like Pluto or Orcus, dragged away the 
dead by the feet, killing with hammers all who 
still breathed. The Christian ladies of the highest 
respectability even suffered these monstrosities. 
Some played the role of the Danaides, others that 
of Dirce. It is difficult to say what fable fur- 
nishes a more bloody picture than that of the 
Danaides. The suffering which all mythological 
tradition attributes to these guilty women was 
not cruel enough to suffice for the pleasure of 
Nero and the hahitues of his amphitheatre. Some- 
times they were led out bearing urns, and received 
the fatal blow from an actor figuring as Lynceus. 
Sometimes these unhappy beings went through 
the series of the sufferings of Tartarus before the 
spectators, and only died after hours of torments. 
The representations of Hell were quite a la mode. 
Some years previous (the year 41), some Egj^ptians 
and Nubians came to Rome, and made a great 
success in giving evening performances, in which 
they displayed in order the horrors of the subter- 
ranean world, conforming to the paintings of the 
burial-places of Thebes, notably those of the tomb 
of Seti I. 



HOME AND CHEISTIANITY. 65 

As for the sufferings of the Dirces, there was 
no doubt about them. People know the colossal 
group now in the Museum of Naples, called the 
Toro Farnese^ — Amphion and Zethus attaching 
Dirce to the horns of an unmanageable bull, 
which is to drag her over the rocks and briers of 
Cithaeron. This mediocre Rhodian marble, brought 
to Rome in the time of Augustus, was the object of 
universal admiration. How could there be a finer 
subject for the hideous art which the cruelty of 
the time had made in vogue, and which consisted 
in reproducing the celebrated statues in living 
tableaux ? An inscription and a fresco of Pom- 
peii seem to prove that this terrible scene was 
frequently repeated. in the arenas, when a woman 
was the sufferer. Naked, attached by the hair to 
the horns of a furious bull, these poor wretches 
glutted the eyes of a ferocious people. Some of 
the Christians immolated in this way were feeble 
in body : their courage was superhuman. But 
the infamous crowd had eyes alone foo? their torn 
bowels and lacerated bosoms. 

After the day when Jesus expired in Golgotha, 
the fete day in the Gardens of Nero (it may 
be fixed about the first of August, 64) was the 
most solemn in the history of Christianity. The 
solidity of any construction is in proportion to the 
sum of virtue, of sacrifices, and of devotion which 
has been laid down at its base. Only fanatics lay 



66 EISTGLISH CONFEEENCES. 

foundations. Judaism endures still on account of 
the intense frenzy of its zealots; Christianity, on 
account of its first witnesses. The orgy of Nero 
was the grand baptism of blood which set Rome 
apart as the city of martyrs in order to play a 
distinct role in the history of Christianity and to 
be the second Holy City. It was the taking pos- 
session of the Vatican Hill by conquerors hitherto 
unknown there. The odious, hair-brained man 
who governed the world did not perceive that he 
was the founder of a new order, and that he signed 
a charter for the future, the effects of which would 
be claimed after eighteen hundred years. 

IV. 

As we have said, it is allowable, without im- 
probabilit)^, to connect the deaths of the apostles 
Peter and Paul with the account which we have 
just given. The only historical incident known, 
by which the martyrdom of Peter can be ex- 
plained, is the episode recounted by Tacitus. 
Some solid reasons also lead us to believe that 
Paul suffered the death of a martyr at Rome. It 
is then natural to suppose that he also died in the 
massacre of July and August, 64. As to the man- 
ner of death of the two apostles, we know with 
certainty that Peter was crucified. According to 
some ancient writings, his wife was executed with 



EOME AND CHRISTIANITY. 67 

him, and he saw her led to the sacrifice. One 
accepted account of the third century says, that, 
too humble to equal Jesus, he suffered with his 
head down. The characteristic trait of the butch- 
ery of 64 having been the search for odious rari- 
ties in torture, it is possible that in truth Peter 
was shown to the crowd in this hideous attitude. 
^Seneca mentions some cases in which tyrants 
have been known to turn the heads of the cru- 
cified towards the earth. Christian piety has seen 
,a mystical refinement in that which was indeed an 
odd caprice of the executioner. Perhaps this ex- 
tract from the Fourth Gospel — " Thou shalt stretch 
forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and 
carry thee whither thou wouldest not" — includes 
some allusion to a peculiarity in the suffering of 
Peter. Paul, in his quality of honestior^ had his 
head cut off. It is also probable that he was 
judged regularly, and that he was not included in 
the summary condemnations of the victims in the 
fete of Nero. All that, I repeat, is doubtful, and 
of little importance. True or not, the legend is 
believed. At the commencement of the third 
century, near Rome, there were already seen two 
monuments bearing the names of Peter and Paul. 
One was situated at the foot of the Vatican Hill, 
that of St. Peter : the other, in the way to Ostia, 
was thdt of St. Paul. They were called in ora- 
torial style the trophies of the apostles. In the 



68 ENGLISH CONFERENCES. 

fourth century two basilicas were raised above 
these trophies. One of them is the present basilica 
of St. Peter : the other, St. Paul-without-the-Walls, 
has retained its essential features until our own 
century. 

Did the trophies which the Christians venerated 
about the year 200 designate the spots upon which 
these apostles suffered ? It is possible. It is not 
unlikely that Paul, toward the end of his life, 
dwelt in the suburb which extended beyond the 
Lavernal gate as far as the pine of the Salvian,, 
springs in the way to Ostia. The shade of Peter, 
on the other hand, wanders always, according to the 
Christian legend, towards the turpentine-tree of 
the Vatican, not far from the gardens of the Circus 
of Nero, and especially about the obelisk. It may 
be that the ancient place of the obelisk in the 
sacristy of St. Peter, now indicated by an inscrip- 
tion, is nearer to the place where St. Peter upon 
the cross of his frightful agony surfeited the eyes 
of a populace greedy to see him suffer. How- 
ever, that is a secondary question. If the basilica 
of the Vatican does not really cover the tomb of 
St. Peter, it points out not the less for our remem- 
brance one of the spots most truly hallowed by 
Christianity. The place which the seventeenth 
century surrounded with a theatrical colonnade 
was a second Calvary; and, even supposing that 
Peter was not crucified there, at least wq cannot 



ROME AND CHEISTIANITY. 69 

doubt the sufferings of the Danaides and the 
Dirces. 

We shall show in our next assembly how tradi- 
tion disposes of all these doubts, and how the 
Church consummates reconciliation between Peter 
and Paul, which death perhaps began. This was 
the price of success. The Judsean-Christianity 
of Peter and the Hellenism of Paul, apparently 
irreconcilable, were equally necessarj' to the suc- 
cess of the future work. The Judsean-Christian- 
ity represented the conservative spirit without 
which nothing is solid ; Hellenism, advance and 
progress, without which nothing truly exists. 
Life is the result of a conflict between two con- 
trary forces. The absence of all revolutionary 
spirit is as fatal as the excess of revolution. 



THIED COETEEEl^rOE, 

London, Apkil 13, 1880. 



ROME, 

THE CENTRE OF THE FORMATION OF ECCLESIASTICAL 
AUTHORITY. 



THIRD CONFERENCE. 

EOME THE CENTRE OF THE FOEMATION OF 
ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY. 



Almost always the nations created to play a 
part in universal civilization, like Judaea, Greece, 
and the Italy of the renaissance, exercise their full 
action upon the world, only after becoming victims 
to their own grandeur. They must first die ; then 
the world lives on them, assimilates to itself that 
which they have created at the price of their fever 
and their sufferings. Nations ought to choose in 
fact between the long, tranquil, obscure destiny 
of that which lives for itself, and the troubled, 
stormy career of that which lives for humanity. 
The nation which works out social and religious 
problems in its 'own bosom is almost always weak 
politically. Every country which dreams of a 
kingdom of God, which lives for general ideas, 
which pursues a work of universal interest, sacri- 
fices through the same its individual destiny, 
enfeebles and destroys its role as a terrestrial 

73 



74 ENGLISH COXPEEENCES. 

country. One can never set himself on fire vnth. 
impunity.. Since Judaea made the religious con- 
quest of the world, it was necessary that she 
should disappear as a nation. A revolution of 
extreme violence broke out in this country in the 
year 66. During four years, this strange race, 
which seemed created to defy equally that which 
blessed and that which cursed it, was in a convul- 
sion before which the historian should pause with 
respect as he would before all mystery. 

The causes of this crisis were very old, and the 
crisis itself was inevitable. The Mosaic law, a 
work of exalted Utopians possessed of a powerful 
socialist ideal, — the . least politic of men, — was, 
like the Islam, exclusive of a civil society parallel 
with a religious society. This law, which appears 
to have been drawn up, as we now read it, in the 
seventh century before Jesus Christ, would have 
been the means of destrojdng the little kingdom of 
the descendants of David, even without the Assyr- 
ian conquest. Since the preponderance assumed 
by the prophetic element, the kingdom of Judah 
— embroiled with all its neighbors, seized with a 
permanent rage against Tyre,, hating Edom, Moab, 
and Ammon — could no longer survive. I repeat, 
a nation which devotes itself to social and religious 
problems neglects its politics. The day in which 
Israel became " a peculiar people of God, a king- 
dom of priests, a holy nation," it was written that 



ROME AKD CHKISTIAlSriTY. 75 

she should no longer be a nation as other nations. 
Contrary destinies cannot be united : an exalta- 
tion is always expiated by an abasement. 

The Achemenidean kingdom gave Israel little 
repose. This grand feudality, tolerant towards 
all provincial differences, almost analogous to the 
Califat of Bagdad and to the Ottoman Empire, 
was the rule undex which the Jews found them- 
selves most at ease. The Ptolemaic rule in the 
third century before Jesus Christ seemed equally 
sympathetic to them : there were even no Seleu- 
cidae. Antioch had become an active centre of 
Hellenic propagandism. Antiochus Epiphanus 
felt it necessary to set up everywhere the image of 
Jupiter Olympus as the sign of his power. Then 
broke * out the first great Jewish revolt agamst 
profane civilization. Israel had patiently sup- 
ported the disappearance of its political existence 
since Nebuchadnezzar. It retained no measure in 
which it saw a danger to its religious institutions. 
A race, in general not military, was seized with 
an access of heroism ; without a regular army, 
without generals, without tactics, it conquered 
the Seleucidaa, maintained its revealed rights, and 
created a second period of autonomy. The Asmo- 
nean royalty, nevertheless, was always distracted 
by profound interior vices. It endured but one 
century. The destiny of the Jewish people was 
not to constitute a separate nationality. That 



76 ENGLISH CONFEKENCES. 

people dreamed always of something international. 
Its ideal was not the city, it was the synagogue, 
the free congregation. The same is true of the 
Islam, which has created an immense empire, but 
has destroyed all nationality, in the sense in which 
we understand it, among the peoples which it has 
subjugated, and leaves them no other country than 
the mosque and the Zaouia. 

The name of theocracy is often applied to such 
a social condition, and rightly so, if we mean by 
it that the profound idea of the Semitic religions, 
.and of the empires which came out from them, is 
the kingdom of God considered as the master of 
the world, and aniversal suzerain. But theocracy 
with these nations was not synonymous with the 
domination of priests. The priest, properly speak- 
ing, plays an unimportant role in the history of 
Judaism and Islamism. The power belongs to the 
representative of God, — to him whom God inspires, 
to the prophet, to the holy man, to him who has 
received his mission from Heaven, and who proves 
his mission by a miracle, that is to say, by success. 
In default of a prophet, the power belongs to the 
author of apocalypses, and of apocryphal books 
attributed to the ancient prophets, or, better, to 
the doctor who interprets the divine law, to the 
head of the synagogue, and, still more, to the head 
of the family who guards the depository of the 
law, and transmits it to his children. A civil 



BOME AND CHRISTIANITY. 77 

power, a royalty, has little to do with such social 
organization. This organization never works 
better than among spread-out peoples, under the 
rights of tolerated foreigners, in a grand empire 
where uniformity does not rule. It is the nature 
of Judaism to be politically subordinate, since it 
cannot draw from its own bosom a principle of 
military power. Its animus has been to form com- 
munities with their own laws and their own magis- 
trates in the midst of other states, until modern 
liberalism introduced the principle of the equality 
of all before the law. 

The Roman rule, established in Judaea sixty- 
three years before Christ by the armies of Pompey, 
seemed at first to realize some of the conditions 
of Jewish life. Rome at this epoch did not pur- 
sue the policy of assimilating the countries which 
she annexed to her vast empire. She robbed 
them of the right of peace and war, and arrogated 
to herself only the arbitration in great political 
questions. 

Under the degenerated remains of the Asmo- 
nean dynasty and under the Herods, the Jewish 
nation preserved a half independence, in which its 
religious state was respected. But the interior 
feeling of the people was too strong. Beyond a 
certain degree of religious fanaticism, man is un- 
governable. It should be said that Rome strove 
without ceasing to render her power in the East 



78 ENGLISH COXFEKEXCES. 

more effective. The little vassal kingdoms wliich 
she had at first preserved, disappeared day by day, 
and the provinces made returns to the empire pure 
and simple. The administrative customs of the 
Eomans. even in their most reasonable aspects, 
were odious to the Jews. In general, the Romans 
shovred the greatest condescension to the fastidi- 
ous scruples of the nation : but that Tras not suffi- 
cient : things had come to a point where nothing 
could be done without touching upon a canonical 
question. These absolute religions, like Islamism 
and Judaism, allow no participation : if they do 
not reign, they call themselves persecuted. If 
they feel themselves protected, they become exact- 
ing, and seek to render life impossible to other 
worships about them. 

I. should depart from my plan if I recounted to 
you that strange struggle of which Josephus tells 
us, — the terror in Jerusalem, Simon Bar-Gioras, 
commandant in the city, John of Giscala with his 
assassins, master of the temple. Fanatical move- 
ments are far from excluding hate, jealousy, and 
defiance, from those who take part in them. Very 
decided and passionate men associated together 
ordinarily suspect each other, and in this there is 
a force : for reciprocal suspicion establishes terror 
among them, binds them as with an iron chain, 
hinders defections and moments of weakness. 
Interest creates the coterie. Absolute principles 



KOME AND CHRISTIANITY. 79 

create division, and inspire the temptation to deci* 
mate, to expel, to kill enemies. Those who judge 
human affairs superficially believe that a revolu- 
tio;ii is quelled when the revolutionists " eat one 
another," as it is expressed. It is, on the contrary, 
a proof that the revolution has all its energy, that 
an impersonal ardor presides over it. This is no- 
where more clearly seen than in the terrible drama 
at Jerusalem. The actors seem to have entered 
into the compact of death like some infernal 
rounds, in which, according to the belief of the 
middle ages, Satan was seen forming a chain to 
draw into a fantastic gulf numbers of men, dancing, 
and holding each other by the hand. So revolu- 
tion allows no one to escape from the dance which 
it leads. Terror is behind the lukewarm. Turn 
by turn, exalting some, and exalted by others, they 
rush into the abyss. None can recede ; for behind 
each one is a concealed sword, which, at the mo- 
ment that he wishes to draw back, forces him to 
advance. 

The strangest thing of all is that these madmen 
were not wholly wrong. The fanatics of Jerusa- 
lem, who affirmed that Jerusalem was eternal even 
while it was burning, were nearer the truth than 
those who regarded them as mere assassins. They 
deceived themselves upon the military question, 
but not upon the distant religious result. These 
troubled days point out, in fact, the moment when 



80 EN"GLISH COKFEEENCES. 

Jemsalem became the spiritual capital of the 
world. The Apocalypse, a burning expression of 
the love which she inspired, has taken its place 
among the religious writings of humanity, and has 
there consecrated the image of the beloved city. 
Ah, how important it is never to predict the future 
of a saint or a villain, a fool or a sage ! Jeru- 
salem, a city of common people, would have pur- 
sued indefinitely its uninteresting history. It is 
because it had the incomparable honor of being 
the cradle of Christianity, that it was the victim 
of the Johns of Giscala, of the Bar-Gioras, — in 
appearance the scourges of their country, in reality 
the instruments of its apotheosis. These zealots, 
whom Josephus treats as brigands and assassins, 
were politicians of the highest order, but unskil- 
ful soldiers : still they lost heroically a country 
which could not be saved. They lost a material 
city : they established the spiritual reign of Jeru- 
salem, sitting in her desolation far more glorious 
than she was in the days of Herod and of Solo- 
mon. What did these conservatives, these Sad- 
ducees, really desire ? They wished something 
mean, — the continuation of a city of priests like 
Emesa, Tyane, Comane. Assuredly they did not 
deceive themselves when they declared that the 
surging enthusiasm was the ruin of the nation. 
Revolution and Messianism destroyed the nation- 
al existence of the Jewish people ; but revolution 



ROME AND CHRISTIANITY. 81 

and Messianism were the true vocation of this 
people, — that by which they contributed to the 
universal civilization. 

IT. 

The victory of Rome was complete. A captair 
of our race, of our blood, a man like us, at the 
head of legions in whose roll, if we could read it, 
we should meet many of our ancestors, had come 
to crush the fortress of Semitism, to inflict upon 
the revealed, accepted law the greatest injury 
which it had received. It was the triumph of Ro- 
man right, or rather rational right, a creation 
utterly philosophical, presupposing no revelation, 
above the Jewish Thora, the fruit of a revelation. 
This right, whose roots were partly Greek, but in 
which the practical genius of the Latins made so 
fine a part, was the excellent gift which Rome 
brought to the vanquished in return for their in- 
dependence. Each victory for Rome was a vic- 
tory for right. Rome bore into the world a better 
principle in several respects than that of the Jews : 
I mean the profane state, reposing on a purely 
civil conception of society. 

The triumph of Titus was then legitimate in 
many ways, and still there never was a more use- 
less triumph. The deplorable religious nothing- 
ness of Rome rendered its victory unfruitful. 
This victory did not retard the progress of Juda- 



'82 ENGLISH COXTEEEXCES. 

ism a single day : it did not give the religion of 
the empire an added chance to struggle against 
this redoubtable riA'al. The national existence 
of the Jewish people was lost forever: but that 
was a blessing. The true glory of Judaism was 
Christianity, about to be born. The ruin of Jeru- 
salem and the temple was an unequalled good for 
Christianity. 

If the reasoning of Titus according to Tacitus is 
correctly reported, the victorious general believed 
that the destruction of the temple would be the 
ruin of Christianity as well as that of Judaism. 
Xo one wa5 ever more completely deceived. The 
Romans imagined, that, in tearing up the root, they 
should eradicate the shoot at the same time : but 
the shoot was already a shrub that lived its own 
life. If the temple had survived, Christianity 
would certainly have been arrested in its develop- 
ment. The surviving temple would have con- 
tinued to be the centre of all Judaic works. It 
would always have been regarded as the most holy 
place of the world: pilgrims would have come 
there, and would there have brought their tributes. 
The Church of Jerusalem, grouped around by 
consecrated parvises, would have continued, by 
the strength of its primacy, to receive the hom- 
age of all the world, to persecute the Chris- 
tians of the Church of Paul, to exact, that, in 
order to have the riq-ht to call one's self the dis- 



BOME A:N'D CHRISTIAISriTY. 83 

ciple of Jesus, one should practise the circumcision, 
and observe the Mosaic code. All effectual propa- 
gandism would have been interdicted : letters of 
obedience signed at Jerusalem would have been 
exacted from the missionary. A centre of irref- 
ragable authority, a patriarchate composed of a 
sort of college of cardinals under the presidency 
of men like James, pure Jews belonging to the 
family of Jesus, would have been established, and 
would have constituted an immense danger for 
the new-born Church. When one sees St. Paul 
after so many mishaps remaining always attached 
to the Church of Jerusalem, one understands what 
difficulties a rupture with these holy personages 
would have presented. Such a schism would 
have been considered as an enormity. The sepa- 
ration from Judaism would have been impossible ; 
and this separation was the indispensable con- 
dition of the existence of the new religion. The 
mother was about to kill the child. The temple, 
on the contrary, once destroyed, the Christiajis 
thought no more of it : very soon, indeed, they will 
consider it a profane place : Jesus will be every 
thing to them. The Christian Church of Jeru- 
salem was by the same stroke reduced to a secon- 
dary importance. It was re-organized around the 
element which made its force, the desposyni^ the 
members of the family of Jesus, the sons of 
Clopas ; but it will reign no more. This centre 



84 ENGLISH CONFEEENCES. 

of hate and exclusion once destroyed, the recon- 
ciliation of the opposing parties in the Church of 
Jesus will become easy. Peter and Paul will be 
brought into accord, and the terrible duality of 
the new-born Christianity will cease to be a mor- 
tal sore. Lost in the depth of the interior of the 
Batansea and the Hauran, the little group which 
attached itself to James and Clopas becomes the 
Ebionite sect, and slowly dies. 

These relatives of Jesus were pious, tranquil, 
mild, modest, hard-working men, faithful to the 
severest precepts of Jesus concerning poverty, 
but at the same time very exact Jews, considering 
the title of " Child of Israel " before every other 
advantage. From the year 70 to about the year 
110, they really governed the churches beyond 
the Jordan, and formed a sort of Christian senate. 
There is no need to demonstrate the immense 
danger which these pre-occupations, with genealo- 
gies, were to the new-born Christianity. A sort 
of nobility of Christianity was about to be formed. 
In the political order the nobility is almost a 
necessity to the state. Politics having elements 
of gross struggles which render it more material 
than ideal, a state is very strong only when a 
certain number of families has, by tradition and 
privilege, the duty and interest of guarding its 
welfare, representing and defending it. But, in 
the order of the ideal government, birth is noth 



EOME AND CHEISTIANITY. 85 

ing : each one is valued in proportion to the truth 
he shows, and the good he does. The institutions 
which have a religious, literary, moral end, are lost, 
when considerations of family, caste, heredity, pre- 
vail in them. The nephews and cousins of Jesus 
would have ruined Christianity, if the churches 
of Paul had not already been strong enough to 
act as a counterpoise to this aristocracy, the ten- 
dency of which would have been to proclaim it- 
self alone respectable, and to treat all converts as 
intruders. Some pretensions analogous to those of 
the Alides in Islam were established. Islamism 
would certainly have perished under the embar- 
rassment caused by the family of the prophet, if 
the result of the struggles of the first century of 
the Hegira had not been to reject, upon second 
thought, all those who were too near the person 
of the prophet. The true heirs of a great man 
are those who continue his work, and not his 
relatives by blood. Considering the tradition of 
Jesus as his own possession, the little coterie of 
the Nazarenes, as they are called, would certainly 
have stifled it. Happily this narrow circle dis- 
appeared in good season: the relatives of Jesus 
were soon forgotten in the interior of the Hauran. 
They lost all importance, and. left Jesus to his true 
family, the only one which he has recognized, — 
those of whom he said, '-' They hear the word of 
God, and keep it." 



86 ENGLISH CONFERENCES. 

III. 

AccoEDiNG as tlie Church of Jerusalem sank, 
the Church of Rome rose, or, rather, a phenome- 
non was evidently manifested in the years which 
followed the victory of Titus. It was that the 
Church of Rome became more and more the in- 
heritor and the substitute of the Church of Jeru- 
salem. The spirit of the two churches was the 
same : what was a danger at Jerusalem became 
an advantage at Rome. The taste for tradition 
and the hierarchy, and the respect for authority, 
were in some sort transplanted from the parvises 
of the temple to the Occident. James, the brother 
of the Lord, had been a sort of pope at Jerusalem. 
Rome is about to take up the part of James. We 
shall have the pope at Rome. Without Titus, we 
should have had the pope in Jerusalem, but 
with this great difference, that the pope at Jeru- 
salem would have extinguished Christianity in 
about one or two hundred years, while the Pope 
of Rome has made it the religion of the universe. 

Here appears a very important person, who 
seems to have been the head of the Roman Church 
in the early years of the first century, concerning 
whom I am happy to find myself in accord with 
one of your most scholarly and enlightened .critics, 
Mr. Lightfoot. I speak of Clement Romanus. In 
the penumbra in which he remains, enveloped and 



BOME AND CHBTSTIANITY. 87 

almost lost in the luminous dust of a beautiful far- 
off history, Clement is one of the grand figures of 
early Christianity : one would say that it was the 
head of an old effaced fresco of Giotto's, recog- 
nizable still from his golden aureola, and some dim 
features of striking purity and sweetness. One 
thing is beyond doubt : it is the high rank which 
he held in the utterly spiritual hierarchy of the 
church of his time, and the unequalled credit with 
which he sustained it. His approval made the law. 
All parties clung to him, and wished to shield 
themselves under his authority. It is probable 
that he was one of the most energetic agents of 
the grand work that was about to be accomplished: 
I mean the posthumous reconciliation of Peter 
and Paul, without which union the work of Christ 
could only have perished. His high personality, 
aggrandized by tradition, was, after that of Peter, 
the most holy figure of the primitive Christian 
Rome. 

Already the idea of a certain primacy in the 
Church of Rome began to show itself. The right 
of advising the other churches and of settling 
their differences was accorded to this church. It 
is believed that like privileges had been allowed 
to Peter among the disciples. Now a still closer 
bond was established between Peter and Rome. 
In the time of Clement, great dissensions divided 
the Church at Corinth. The Roman Church, being 



88 ENGLISH CONFEEENCES. 

applied to in these troubles, replied by an epistle, 
which has been preserved to us. The epistle is 
anonymous ; but a very ancient tradition teaches 
that Clement was the author of it. The Church 
at Corinth had changed but little since St. Paul. 
It had the same proud, disputant, feeble spirit. It 
is evident that the principal opposition to the 
hierarchy was found in this Greek spirit, always 
mobile, because it was always full of life, undisci- 
plined (and for my part I like it), not knowing 
how to form a flock from a crowd. The women 
and the children were in full revolt. Some supe- 
rior doctors imagined that they possessed a pro- 
found sense in every thing, and mystic secrets 
analogous to the gift of tongues and the discern- 
ment of spirits. Those who were honored with 
these supernatural gifts scorned the ancients, and 
aspired to replace them. Corinth had a respecta- 
ble presbytery, which, however, did not receive the 
highest mysticism. The advanced pretenders cast 
it in the shade, and put themselves in its place. 
Some of the preshyteri were even dismissed. The 
struggle between the established hierarchy and 
personal revelations began, and this struggle fills 
the history of the Church ; the privileged soul 
complaining, that, in spite of the favors with which 
it is honored, a gross clergy, wanting in spiritual 
life, dominates it officially. We see that this 
was the heresy of individual mysticism, maintain- 



ROME AKD CHRTSTTAKCTY. 89 

ing the rights of the spirit against authority, pre- 
tending to rise above common mortals and the 
ordinary clergy by right of its direct intercourse 
with divinity. 

The Roman Church was always the church of 
order, of subordination, and of rule. Its funda- 
mental principle was that humility and submission 
were of more value than the most sublime gifts. 
Its epistle is the first manifestation in the Chris- 
tian Church of the principle of authority. 

A few years since, there was much surprise 
when a French archbishop, then a senator, said 
in the Tribune, ''My clergy is my regiment." 
Clement had said this before him. Order and 
obedience were the supreme laws of the family 
and the church. " Let us consider the soldiers 
who serve under our sovereigns. With what 
order, what punctuality, what submission, they 
obey their commands : all are not prefects, nor tri- 
bunes, nor centurions; but each one in his rank 
jexecutes the orders of the emperor and of his 
chiefs. The great cannot exist without the small, 
nor the small without the great. In every thing 
there is a mingling of diverse elements, and by 
this mingling all advances. Let us take, for exam- 
ple, our bodies. The head is nothing without the 
feet ; the feet are nothing without the head. The 
smallest of our organs are necessary, and serve 
the whole body : all conspire, and obey the same 



90 ENGLISH cokfere:n'Ces. 

principle of subordination for the preservation of 

the whole." 

The history of the ecclesiastical hierarchy is 
the history of a triple abdication ; the community 
of the faithful first placing all its powers in the 
hands of the ancients, or preshyteri ; the presby- 
teral body at length delegating its authority to one 
person who was the ejnseopos ; then the episeopi of 
the Latin Church recognized as their head one 
of themselves, who became the pope. This last 
progress, if we may call it so, was not accomplished 
until our time. The creation of the episcopate, 
on the contrary, was the work of the second cen- 
tury. The absorption of the church by the pres- 
hyteri was accomplished before the year 100. In 
the Epistle of Clement Romanus it is not yet with 
the episcopate, but with the presbytery, that he 
deals. We find there no trace of a presbyteros 
superior to the others, and entitled to dethrone 
them; but the author proclaims positively that 
the presbytery and the clergy are above the 
people. The apostles, in establishing churches, 
chose through the inspiration of the SjDirit the 
" bishops and the deacons of the future believers." 
The power emanating from the apostles has been 
transmitted by regular succession. No church has 
then the right to dethrone its seniors. The privi- 
lege of the rich is nothing in the church. Accord- 
ingly, those who are favored with mystic gifts, in- 



ROME AND CHRISTIANITY. 91 

stead of believing themselves above the hierarchy, 
should be the more submissive. This involves the 
great problem, " Who exists in the church ? Is 
it the people ? Is it the clergy ? Is it inspira- 
tion ? " This problem was already given in the 
time of St. Paul, who resolved it in the true man- 
ner by mutual charity. One epistle trenches upon 
the question in the sense of pure Catholicism. 
The apostolic title is every thing: the right of 
the people is reduced to nothing. We may then 
safely assert that Catholicism had its origin at 
Rome, since the Church of Rome laid down its 
first rules. Prescience pertains to spiritual gifts, 
to science and distinction : it belongs to the hie- 
rarchy, to the powers transmitted through the 
medium of the canonical ordination, which attaches 
itself to the apostles by an unbroken chain. The 
free chui'ch as Christ conceived it, and as St. Paul 
also regarded it, was a Utopia which held nothing 
for the future. Evangelical liberty had destroyed 
it ; and it was not realized, that, with the hierarchy 
uniformity and death would come in time. 

IV. 

Clement had probably not seen either Peter or 
Paul. His great practical sense showed him that 
the salvation of the Christian Church demanded 
the reconciliation of the two founders. Did he 



92 ENGLISH COXFEREXCES. 

influence the author of the Acts which represent 
to us this reconciliation as accomplished, and with 
whom he seems to have had some intercourse, or 
did these two pious souls spontaneously fall into 
accord on account of the bias which he had given 
to Christian opinion ? We are ignorant for want 
of proofs. One thing is sure, the reconciliation of 
Peter and Paul was a Roman work. Rome had 
two churches, — one coming from Peter, the other 
from Paul. Those numerous converts who came 
to Jesus — some through the school of Peter, and 
some through that of Paul — were tempted to ex- 
claim, '' What ! Are there, then, two Christs ? " 
It was necessary to be able to reply, " No : Peter 
and Paul understand each other perfectly: the 
Christianity of one is the Christianity of the 
other." Perhaps (this is an ingenious hypothesis 
of M. Strauss) a light cloud was introduced for 
this purpose into the evangelical legend of the 
miraculous fishino^. Accordino^ to the recital of 
Luke, the nets of Peter would not contain the 
multitudes of fish which could easily have been 
taken ; Peter was obliged to make a sign to his 
co-workers to come to his aid. A second bark 
(Paul and his friends) was filled as the first, and 
the fishing of the kingdom of God was super- 
abundant. 

The life of the apostles begins to become ob- 
scure. All those who have seen them have disap- 



BOME AND CHEISTlAJSriTY. 93 

peared : most of them left no writings. One had 
entire liberty to embroider on this virgin canvas 
still. Friends and enemies profited by the un- 
known to set up arguments in support of their 
theses, and to satisfy their hates. Towards the 
year 130, that is to say about sixty-six years after 
the death of the apostles, a vast Ebionite legend 
was produced at Rome, and designated by the title 
of the preaching, or the travels, of Peter. The 
missions of the chief of the apostles were recounted 
there, principally those along the coast of Phoe- 
nicia ; the conversions which he had made ; above 
all, his struggles against the great anti-Christ, 
Simon the Magician, who was at this epoch the 
spectre of the Christian conscience. But fre- 
quently under this abhorred name another person 
was concealed : it was the false apostle Paul, the 
enemy of the law, the veritable destroyer of the 
Church. The true Church was that at Jerusalem, 
presided over by James, the brother of the Lord. 
No apostolate was of any value, if it could not 
show letters emanating from this central college. 
Paul had none : therefore he was an intruder. He 
was the '' man enemy," who came behind to sow 
the tares in the steps of the true sower. With 
what fury Peter gave the denial to his impostures, 
to his false allegations of personal revelations, his 
ascension to the third heaven, his pretension of 
knowing about Jesus some things which the hear- 



94 EKGLISH CONFERENCES. 

ers of the gospel had not understood, the exagge- 
rated manner in which he and his disciples inter- 
preted the divinity of Jesus ! 

These strange ideas of half ignorant sectaries 
would have been without consequences outside of 
Rome ; but every thing which related to Peter as- 
sumed importance in the capital of the world. In 
spite of its heresies, " The Preachings of Peter " 
had much interest for the orthodox. The primacy 
of Peter was there proclaimed. St. Paul was thus 
injured; but a few retouches extenuated what was 
shocking in these attacks. Several attempts were 
made to diminish the peculiarities of the new book, 
and adapt it to the Catholics. This mode of re- 
modelling books to suit the sect to which one 
belonged was the order of the day. Little by 
little the force of things was understood : all sensi- 
ble men saw that there was safety for the work of 
Jesus only in the perfect reconciliation of the two 
heads of the Christian doctrine. Paul had, even 
in the sixth century, some bitter enemies : he had 
always some enthusiastic followers like Marcion. 
Outside of these obstinate men of the right and 
left, there was a union of the moderate masses, 
who, before their Christianism in one of the 
schools, fully recognized the right of the other to 
be called Christian. James, the partisan of abso- 
lute Judaism, was sacrificed, although he had 
been the true chief of the circumcision. Peter, 



KOME AND CHRISTIANITY. 95 

who was mucli less objectionable to the disciples 
of Paul, was preferred before him. James re- 
tained no deyoted partisans outside of the Judean- 
Christians. 

It is difficult to say who gained the most in this 
reconciliation. The concessions came principally 
from the side of Paul : all Paul's disciples received 
the others without difficulty, while those of Peter 
repulsed the followers of Paul. But concessions 
usually come from the strong. In truth, each day 
confirmed Paul's victory. 

Each Gentile convert weighted the balance on 
his side. Outside of Syria, the Judean-Christians 
were swallowed up by the wave of new converts. 
The churches of Paul prospered: they had good 
judgment, solidity of mind, and some pecuniary 
resources which the others had not. The Ebionite 
churches, on the contrary, grew poorer each day. 
The money of the churches of Paul was spent in 
the support of some glorious poor men, who were 
unable to earn any thing, but who possessed the 
traditional life of the primitive spirit. The ele- 
vated piety and severe manners of these last were 
admired by the Christian communities of Pagan 
origin, who imitated and assimilated themselves to 
these customs. It soon happened that no distinc- 
tion was manifest : the sweet and conciliatory 
spirit of St. Luke and Clement Romanus pre- 
vailed. The compact of peace was sealed. It was 



96 ENGLISH CONFERENCES. 

agreed that Peter had converted the first-fruits of 
the Gentiles, that he had first absolved them from 
the yoke of the law. It was admitted that Peter 
and Paul had been the two heads, the founders of 
the Church of Rome ; Peter and Paul became the 
halves of an inseparable couple, — two luminaries, 
like the sun and moon. What one taught, the 
other taught also. They had always been in 
accord : they had opposed the same enemies, had 
been victims of Simon the Magician. At Rome 
they lived like brothers; the Church of Rome 
was their common work. The supremacy of this 
church was established for ages. 

Thus, from the reconciliation of these parties, 
the settlement of these primitive struggles, there 
came forth a grand unity, — the Catholic Church, 
the Church of Peter and of Paul, a stranger to 
the rivalries which had marked the first century. 

It was, above all, the death of the two apostles 
which pre-occupied the parties, and gave an oppor- 
tunitj^ for the most diverse combinations. The 
tissue of tradition grew in this respect, by an in- 
stinctive travail, almost as imperious as that which 
had presided at the construction of the legend of 
Jesus. The end of the life of Peter and of Paul 
was commanded a priori. It was maintained that 
Christ had predicted the martyrdom of Peter, as 
he had announced the death of the sons of Zebe- 
dee. The need was felt of associating in death 



P.OME AXD CHETSTIANITY. 97 

the two persons wlio had been reconciled by force. 
It was hoped, and perhaps this was not far from 
right, that they died together, or at least as the 
consequence of the same event. The places which 
were believed to have been sanctified by this 
bloody drama were early fixed upon, and conse- 
crated by memorice. In each case, whatever the 
people desired came in the end to be true. Tra- 
dition makes history, retrospectively, as it ought 
to have been, and as it never is. Not long ago 
the portraits of Victor Emmanuel and Pius IX. 
hung side by side in every frequented place in 
Italy ; and the people desired that these two men, 
who represented principles whose reconciliation 
was generally considered necessary to Italy, should 
be in reality completely united. If, in our time, 
such views impose themselves on history, it will 
one day appear, in documents reputed to be seri- 
ous, that Victor Emmanuel and Pius IX. (probably 
Garibaldi will be added) met each other secretly, 
understood and loved each other. During the 
middle ages, at different times, similar attempts 
were made to appease the hatreds of the Domini- 
cans and Franciscans ; to prove that the founders 
of these two orders were two brothers living to- 
gether in the most affectionate intercourse ; that 
at first their rules were the same ; and that St. 
Dominic girded himself with the cord of St. Fran- 
cis. 



98 ENGLISH COXFEEElSrCES. 

Concerning Peter and Panl, the increase of the 
legend was rich and rapid. Rome and all its envi- 
rons, above all the way to Ostia, were full of 
souvenirs which were pretended to be connected 
with the last days of the two apostles. A crowd 
of touching circumstances ; the flight of Peter; the 
vision of Jesus bearing his cross, iteriim crucifigi ; 
the final adieu of Peter and Paul ; the meeting of 
Peter with liis wife ; Paul at the Salvian waters ; 
Plautilla sending the handkerchief which bound 
her hair to bandage the eyes of Paul, — all this pre- 
sented a beautiful ensemble, to which was only 
wanting an ingenuous and skilful writer. It was 
too late ; the vein of the first Christian literature 
was spent; the serenity of the narrator of the 
Acts was lost; his voice was raised no more in 
story or in romance. It is impossible to choose 
between a crowd of equally apocryphal writings : 
in vain one seeks to shield these recitals with the 
most venerable names (pseudo-Linus, pseudo-Mar- 
cellus) ; the Roman legend of Peter and Paul 
remains always in a sporadic state. It was more 
often recounted by the pious guides than seriously 
read. It was a local affair : no text concerning it 
has been consecrated and made authoritative for 
reading in the churches. 

Many among you, ladies and gentlemen, will go 
to Rome, or will return there. Ah, well ! if you 



BOME AND CHRISTIANITY. 99 

preserve any good remembrance of these confer- 
ences, go, in memory of me, to the Salvian waters, 
alle tre fontane^ to St. Paul-without-the-Walls. It 
is one of the most beautiful parts of the Roman 
Campagna, — deserted, damp, green, and sad. 
There, in a deep depression in the soil, crowned 
by those grand horizontal lines, disturbed by no 
living detail, — there are some clear and cold 
springs. The fever and mouldiness of the tomb 
are inhaled there. Some Trappists are there estab- 
lished, conscientiously practising their religious 
suicide. When you are there, sit down a moment, 
not too long (one quickly catches the fever there), 
and, while the Trappists give you to drink the 
water which gushes from the three bounds which 
the head of Paul made, think of him who came 
here to talk of these legends with you, and to 
whom you have listened with so much courtesy 
and kind attention. 



rOUETH OOl^FEEEI^OE, 

London, Apeil 14, 1880. 



EOME, 
THE CAPITAL OF CATHOLICISM. 



FOURTH CONFERENCE. 

ROME, THE CAPITAL OF CATHOLICISM. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, — It is plain that the 
importance of the churches in the primitive Chris- 
tian community was in proportion to their apos- 
tolic nobility. The guaranty of orthodoxy was 
in the succession of the bishops, by which the 
great churches were linked to the apostles. A 
direct line appeared to afford a very strong assur- 
ance of conformity of doctrine, and it was jealously 
maintained. Now, what can be said of a church 
founded by both Peter and Paul ? It is clear that 
such a church ought to endure in order to^ have a 
veritable superiority over others. The chef-d'oeuvre 
of the competency of the Roman Church was the 
establishment of this superiority. That once 
assured, the ecclesiastical destiny of Rome was 
established. When this city should have cast off 
her secular character, she would have another, — 
a sacred capacity, corresponding to that of Jeru- 
salem. 

She would know how to confiscate to her profit 
this Christianity which she had so cruelly combat- 

103 



104 ENGLISH CONFERENCES. 

ed, — so much, had humanity suffered, to escape 
from those whom fate had designed for this great 
secular task, regere imperio populos ! 

Under Antonine and Marcus Aurelius, Eome 
reached its highest grandeur ; its rule of the whole 
world seemed to be undisputed ; no cloud could 
be seen upon its horizon. The emigration from 
the provinces, above all from the Orient, was 
augmented rather than lessened. The Greek- 
speaking population was larger than it had ever 
been. All who desired a place in the world 
aspired to come to Rome : nothing was sanctioned 
until it had received the stamp of this universal 
exposition of the products of the entire universe. 

The centre of a future catholic orthodoxy was 
evidently there. The well-developed germ of the 
Papacy existed under Antonine. The Church of 
Eome showed itself more and more indifferent to 
those crude Gnostic speculations which occupied 
some minds filled with the intellectual activity of 
the Greeks, but tainted with the reveries of the 
Orient. The organization of Christian society 
was the principal labor at Rome. This extraordi- 
nary city applied to this object the energetic moral 
strength and the practical genius which she has 
employed in the most diverse causes. Careless of 
speculation, decidedly hostile to dogmatic innova- 
tions, she presided there, — a mistress already 
trained by all the changes which had been brought 
about in discipline and in the hierarchy. 



BOME AND CHEISTIANITY. 105 

I. 

Fkom the year 120 to 130 the Episcopate was 
elaborated in the Christian Church, and the 
creation of the Episcopate was eminently a Roman 
work. All ecdesice imply a little hierarchj^, — a 
bureau as it is called to-day, — a president, some 
assessors, and a small staff of men in its service. 
Democratic associations are careful that these 
functions shall be limited as far as possible as to 
power and duration; but from this arises that 
precarious something which has prevented any 
democratic association from outlasting the cir- 
cumstances which have created it. The Jewish 
synagogues have had more continuity, although the 
synagogical body has never come to be a clergy. 
This is the result of the subordinate place which 
Judaism has held during several centuries: the 
pressure from without has counteracted the effects 
of internal divisions. If the Christian Church 
had been left with the same absence of director- 
ship, it would doubtless have missed its destiny. 

If its ecclesiastical powers had continued to be 
regarded as emanating from the Church itself, it 
would have lost all its hieratic and theocratic char- 
acter. It was written, on the contrary, that a 
clergy should monopolize the Christian Church, 
and substitute themselves for it. Acting as its 
spokesman, presenting itself as having the sole 



106 ENGLISH CONFEEENCES. 

power of attorney in every thing, this clergy will 
be its strength, and at the same time its gnawing 
worm, — the principal cause of its future falls. 

I repeat, that history has no example of a more 
complete transformation than that which occurred 
in the government of the Christian Church about 
the time of Hadrian and Antonine. What hap- 
pened in the Christian Church will happen in any 
association in which the subordinates could resign 
in favor of the bureau, and that again in favor of 
the president ; so that afterwards the subordi- 
nates and the seniors would have no deliberative 
voice nor influence, nor any control in the manage- 
ment of the funds, and the president would be 
able to say, " I alone, I, am the association." The 
preshyteri (seniors) or episcopi (superintending 
officers) became very soon the only representa- 
tives of the Church ; and almost immediately 
another still more important revolution took place. 
Among the preshyteri or episcopi^ there had been 
one, who, through the habit of occupying the prin- 
cipal seat, absorbed the power of the -others, and 
became pre-eminently the episcopos or the presby- 
teros. The form of worship contributed power- 
fully to the establishment of this unity. The 
eucharistic act could only be celebrated by one 
person, and gave to the celebrant an extreme 
importance. That episcopos^ with a surprising 
rapidity, became the head of the presbytery, and, 



BOME AND CHRISTIANITY. 107 

consequently, the entire Church. His cathedra 
was placed apart, and, having the form of an arm- 
chair, became the seat of honor, the symbol 'of 
primacy. From this time, each church has but 
one chief preshyteros^ who is thus called to the 
exclusion of the other episcopi. Beside this bishop, 
there were deacons, widows, and a council of pres- 
hyteri : but the great step has been taken ; the 
bishop is the sole successor of the prophets, his 
associates have disappeared. Apostolic authority, 
reputed as transmitted by the laying-on of hands, 
suppressed the authority of the community. The 
bishops of the various churches soon placed them- 
selves in communication with the others, and 
formed of the Universal Church a sort of oligarchy, 
which held assemblies, censured its members, de- 
cided questions of faith, and was in itself a true 
sovereign power. On one side, the shepherds ; on 
the other, the flock. Primitive equality no longer 
existed: in fact, it had endured but a single day. 
The Church, however, was only an instrument in 
the hands of those who guided her ; and these held 
their power, not from the community, but from 
the spiritual inheritance of a transmission claim- 
ing to date back to the apostles in a continuous 
line. It is evident that the representative system 
will never be in any degree whatever the law of 
the Christian Church. 

It was the Episcopate, without the iutervpntipn 



108 ENGLISH CONFERENCES. 

of civil power, with, no support from the tribunals, 
which thus established order above liberty in a 
society originally founded upon individual inspira- 
tion. This is why the Ebionites, who had no 
Episcopate, had also no idea of Catholicity. At 
first sight, the work of Jesus was not made to last. 
Founded upon a belief in the destruction of the 
world, which, as years rolled on, was proved an 
error, it seemed that his congregation could only 
dissolve in anarchy. The prophetic book, the 
charismes^ the speaking of tongues, individual in- 
spiration, were no more than were necessary to 
bring all again into the proportions of a common 
chapel. Individual inspiration created, but im- 
mediately destroyed what it created. After liber- 
ty, law is necessary. The work of Jesus might 
be considered as saved the day in which it was 
admitted that the Church has a direct power, a 
power representing that of Jesus. Since then the 
Church dominates the individual, drawing him to 
her bosom through his need. Inspiration passes 
from the individual to the community. The clergy 
is the dispenser of all pardons, the intermediary 
between God and the faithful. Obedience, first 
to the Church, then to the bishop, becomes the 
highest duty. Innovation is the sign of error: 
schism, henceforth, will be for the Christian the 
worst of crimes. 

In a certain regard one may say that this was a 



HOME AKD CHEISTIANITr. 109 

decadence, a diminution of that spontaneity which 
had been eminently creative until now. It was 
evident that ecclesiastical forms were about to 
absorb, to stifle, the work of Jesus, that all free 
manifestations of Christian life would soon be 
arrested. Under the censure of the Episcopate, 
the speaking of tongues, prophecy, the creation of 
legends, the making of new sacred books, would 
soon become withered powers, the charismes would 
be reduced to official sacraments. In another 
sense, however, such a transformation was the 
essential condition of the strength of humanity. 
And, moreover, the centralization of powers be- 
came necessary when churches were more nu- 
merous: intercourse between these little pious 
societies would be impossible, unless they had 
representatives appointed to act for them. It is 
undeniable, moreover, that, without the Episco- 
pate, the churches, re-united for a time by the 
souvenirs of Jesus, would gradually have been 
dispersed. The divergences of opinion, the differ- 
ence in the turn of imagination, and, above all, the 
rivalries, and the unsatisfied amours-propres^ would 
have operated by their infinite effects of disunion 
and disintegration. Christianity would have ex- 
pired at the end of three or four centuries, like 
Mithracism and so many other sects v/hich were 
not allowed to endure. Democracy is sometimes 
eminently creative ; but it is upon the condition 



110 ENGLISH CONFEEENCES. 

that the democracy comes forth from conservative 
institutions which prevent the revolutionary fever 
from prolonging itself indefinitely. 

Here was the greatest miracle of the new Chris- 
tianity. It drew order, hierarchy, authority, and 
obedience from the free subjection of desires : it 
organized the crowd ; it disciplined anarchy. 
Wliat does this miracle accomplish other than to 
strike at the pretended derogations to the laws of 
physical nature ? The spirit of Jesus strongly 
inoculated in his disciples that spirit of sweetness, 
of abnegation, of forgetfulness of the present; 
that unique pursuit of interior joys which kills 
ambition; that strong preference given to child- 
hood ; those words repeated without ceasing, as 
from Jesus, " Whoever is first among you, let him 
be the servant of all." The influence of the apos- 
tles was not less in that direction. The apostles 
lived and ruled after their death. The idea that 
the head of the Church held his command under 
the members of the Church who had elected him 
never once occurs in the literature of tliis time. 
The Church thus escaped through the supernatu- 
ral origin of its power, that element of decay 
which exists in delegated authority. A legislative 
and executive authority may come from the peo- 
ple ; but sacraments and dispensations of celestial 
pardons have nothing in common with universal 
suffrage. Such privileges come from heaven, or, 



EOME AND CHEISTIAKITY. Ill 

according to the Christian formula, from Jesus 
Christ, the source of all pardon and of all good. 

The religion of Jesus thus became something 
solid and consistent. The great danger of Gnos- 
ticism, which was to divide Christianity into num- 
berless sects, was exorcised. The word " Catholic 
Church " resounded everywhere, as the name of 
that great body which would thenceforth survive 
the ages unbroken. The character of this catho- 
licity is already seen. The Montanists arcTegarded 
as sectarian ; the Marcionites are convinced of the 
falseness of the apostolic doctrine ; the different 
Gnostic schools are more and more driven from the 
bosom of the general church. Something had arisen 
which was neither Montanism, nor Marcionism, nor 
Gnosticism; which was Christianity, not sectarian, 
— the Christianity of the majority of bishops, resist- 
ing sects, and using them all, having, if you will, 
only negative characters, but preserved by these 
negative characters from the pietist aberrations, and 
from dissolving rationalism. Christianity, like all 
parties who wish to live, disciplines itself, and re- 
strains its own excesses. It unites to mystical ex- 
altation a fund of good sense and moderation which 
will kill Millenarism, Charisms, Glossolaly, and 
all the primitive phenomenal spirits. A handful 
of excited men, like the Montanists, running into 
martyrdom, discouraging penitence, condemning 
marriage, are not the Church. The Juste milieu 



112 ENGLISH CONFERENCES. 

triumplis. Radicals of any sort will never be al- 
lowed to destroy the work of Jesus. The Church 
is always of a medium opinion : it belongs to all 
the world, and is not the privilege of an aristoc- 
racy. The pietist aristocracy of the Phrygian 
sects and the speculative aristocracy of the Gnos- 
tics are equally stripped of their pretensions. 

In the midst of the enormous variety of opinions 
which fill the first Christian age, the Catholic opin- 
ion constitutes a sort of standard. It was not 
necessary to reason with the heretic in order to 
convince him. It was sufficient to show him that 
he was not in communion with the Catholic Church, 
with the grand churches which trace the succession 
of their bishops to the apostles. Quod semper^ quod 
uhique became the absolute rule of truth. The 
argument of prescription to which TertuUian gave 
such eloquent force reviews all the Catholic con- 
troversy. To prove to any one that he was an 
innovator, a disturber, was to prove that he was 
wrong, — an insufficient rule, since, by a singular 
irony of fate, the doctor himself who developed 
this method of refutation in so imperious a man- 
ner, TertuUian, died a heretic. 

Correspondence between the churches was an 
early custom. Circular letters from the heads of 
the great churches, read on Sunday in the re- 
unions of the faithful, were a sort of continuation 
of the apostolic literature. The ecclesiastical 



EOME AND CHRISTIANITY. 113 

proyince, q-aestioning the precedency of the great 
churches, appeared in germ. The Church, like the 
synagogue and the mosque, is essentially a citadel. 
Christianity, like Judaism and Islamism, is a 
religion of cities. The countryman, the paganus^ 
will be the last resistance which Christianity will 
encounter. The few rural Christians came to the 
church of the neighboring city. The Roman 
municipality thus enclosed the church. Among 
the cities, the civitas^ the grand city, was alone a 
yeritable church, with an episcopos. The small 
city was in ecclesiastical dependence on the great 
city. This primacy of the great cities was an 
important fact. The great city once converted, 
the small city and the country followed the move- 
ment. The diocese was thus the unity of the 
conglomerate Christians. As for the ecclesiastical 
province, it corresponded to the Roman province : 
the divisions of worship of Rome and Augustus 
were the secret law which ruled all. Those cities 
which had a flamen, or archiereus^ are those which 
later had an archbishop: the flamen civitatis 
became the bishop. After the third century, the 
flamen held the rank in the city which was later 
that of the bishop in the diocese. Thus it hap- 
pened that the ecclesiastical geography of a 
country was very nearly the geography of the 
same country in the Roman epoch. The picture 
of the bishops and the archbishops is that of the 



114 ENGLISH COXFERENCES. 

ancient civitates^ according to their line of subordi- 
nation. The empire was as the mould in which 
the new religion was formed. The interior frame- 
work, the outlines, the hierarchical divisions, were 
those of the empire. The ancient archives of the 
Roman administration, and the church-registers of 
the middle ages, and even those of our own day, 
are nearly the same thing. 

Thus the grand organisms which have become 
so essential a part of the moral and political life of 
European nations were all created by those naive 
and sincere Christians, whose faith has become 
inseparable from the moral culture of humanity. 
The Episcopate under Marcus Aurelius was fully 
ripe : the Papacy existed in germ. CEcumenical 
councils were impossible. The Christian Empire 
alone could authorize great assemblies ; but the 
provincial synod was used in the affairs of the 
Montanists and of the Passover. The bishop of 
the capital of the province was allowed to pre- 
side without contest. 

II. 

RoiviE was the place in which the grand idea of 
Catholicity was conceived. Rome became each 
day more and more the capital of Christianity, 
and replaced Jerusalem as the religious centre of 
humanity. Its church had a generally recognized 
precedence over others. All doubtful questions 



EOME AND CHRISTIANITY. 115 

which disturbed the Christian conscience de- 
manded an arbitration, if not a solution, at Rome. 
This very defective reasoning was used, — that, 
since Christ had made Cephas the corner-stone of 
his church, this privilege ought to extend to his 
successors. By an unequalled stroke, the Church 
of Rome had succeeded in making itself at the 
same time the Church of Peter and the Church of 
Paul, a new mythical duality, replacing that of 
Romulus and Remus. The Bishop of Rome 
became the bishop of bishops, the one who admon- 
ished others. Rome proclaims its right (a dan- 
gerous right) to excommunicate those who do not 
entirely agree with her. The poor Artemonites 
(a sort of anticipated Arians) had much to com- 
plain of in the injustice of the fate which made 
them heretics; while, even until Victor, all the 
Church of Rome thought with them ; but they 
were not heard. From this point, the Church of 
Rome placed itself above history. The spirit 
.which in 1870 could proclaim the infallibility of 
the Pope might see itself reflected at the end 
of the second century by certain clear indications. 
The writing made at Rome about 180, of which 
the Roman fragment known as the " Canon de 
Muratori ''' m2ikes a part, shows us Rome already 
regulating the canon of the churches, making 
the passion of Peter the basis of Catholicity, 
and repulsing equally Montanism and Gnosticism. 



116 ElS^GLISH COKFEEEKCES. 

Irenseiis refutes all heresies by the faith of this 
church, '' the grandest, the most ancient, the most 
illustrious, which possesses by continuous succes- 
sion the true tradition of the apostles Peter and 
Paul ; to which, on account of its primacy, all the 
rest of the Church should have recourse." 

One material cause contributed much to that 
pre-eminence which most of the churches recog- 
nized in the Church of Rome. This Church was 
extremely rich : its goods, skilfully administered, 
served to succor and propagate other churches. 
The heretics condemned to the mines received 
a subsidy from it : the common treasury was in a 
certain sense at Rome. The Sunday collection, 
practised continually in the Roman Church, was 
probably already established. A marvellous spirit 
of tradition animated this little community, in 
which Judaea, Greece, and Latium seemed to have 
confounded their very different gifts, in view of a 
prodigious future. While the Jewish Monotheism 
furnished the immovable base of the new forma- 
tion, while Greece continued through Gnosticism 
its work of free speculation, Rome attached itself 
with an astonishing readiness to the work of the 
government. All its authorities and artifices 
served well for that. Politics recoils not before 
fraud. Now, politics had already taken up its 
home in the most secret councils of the Church of 
Rome. Some veins of apocryphal literature, con- 



ROME AND CHKISTIAKITY. 117 

stantly refilled, sometimes under tlie name of the 
apostles, sometimes under that of apostolic person- 
ages, such as Clement and Hermas, were received 
with confidence to the limits of the Christian 
world on account of the guaranty of Rome. 

This precedence of the Church *of Rome con- 
tinued to increase up to the third century. The 
bishops of Rome showed a rare competency, evad- 
ing theological questions, but always in the first 
rank in matters of organization and administra- 
tion. The tradition of the Roman Church passes 
for the most ancient of all. Pope Cornelius took 
the lead in the matter of substitution. This was 
particularly seen in the dismissal of the bishops of 
Italy, and the appointment of their successors. 
Rome was also the central authority of the 
churches of Africa. 

This authority was already excessive, and showed 
itself above all in the affair of the Passover. This 
question was much more important than it appears 
to us. In the earlj^ times all Christians continued 
to make the Jewish Passover their principal feast. 
They celebrated this feast on the same day as 
the Jews, — on the 14th of Nisan, upon whatever 
day of the week it happened to fall. Persuaded, 
according to the account of all the old gospels, 
that Jesus, the evening before his death, had eaten 
the Passover with his disciples, they regarded such 
a solemnity as a commemoration of the last supper, 



118 ENGLISH CONFERENCES. 

rather than as a memorial of the resurrection. 
As Christianity became more and more separated 
from Judaism, such a manner of regarding it was 
very much questioned. At first a new tradition 
was promulgated, — that Jesus, being about to die, 
had not eaten the Passover, but had died the very 
day of the Jewish feast, thus constituting himself 
the Pascal Lamb. Moreover, this purely Jewish 
feast wounded the Christian conscience, especially 
in the churches of Paul. The great feast of the 
Christians, the resurrection of Jesus, occurred in 
any case the Sunday after the Jewish Passover. 
According to this idea, the feast was celebrated 
the Sunday which followed the Friday after the 
14th of Nisan. 

In Rome this custom prevailed, at least since 
the pontificates of Xystus and Telesphorus (about 
120). In Asia there were great divisions. The 
conservatives, like Polycarp, Meliton, and all the 
ancient school, believed that the old Jewish cus- 
tom conformed to the first Gospels and to the 
usage of the apostles John and Philip. This was 
the object of the voyage to Rome which Polycarp 
undertook about the year 154, under the Pope 
Anicetus. The interview between Polycarp and 
Anicetus was very cordial. The discussion of 
certain points appears to have been sharp, but 
they understood each other. Polycarp was not 
able to persuade Anicetus to renounce a practice 



EOME AND CHEISTIANITY. 119 

which had been that of the bishops of Rome 
before his time. Anicetus, on the other hand, 
hesitated when Polycarp told him that he gov- 
erned himself according to the rule of John and 
the other apostles, with whom he had lived on 
a familiar footing. The two religious leaders re- 
mained in full communion with each other ; and 
Anicetus showed Polycarp an almost unprece- 
dented honor. In fact he desired that Polycarp, 
in the Assembly of the Faithful at Rome, should 
pronounce, in his stead and in his presence, the 
words of the eucharistic consecration. These 
ardent men were full of too lofty a sentiment to 
rest the unity of their souls upon the uniformity 
of rites and exterior observances. 

Later, unhappily, Rome took the stand of in- 
sisting upon its right. About the year 196 the 
question was more exciting than ever. The 
churches of Asia persisted in their old usage. 
Rome, always enthusiastic for unity, wished to 
coerce them. Upon the invitation of Pope Victor, 
convocations of bishops were held : a vast corre- 
spondence was exchanged. But the bishops of 
Asia, strong in the tradition of two ,apostles and 
of so many illustrious men, would not submit. 
The old Polycrates, Bishop of Ephesus, wrote in 
their name a very sharp letter to Victor and to 
the Church of Rome. The incredible design which 
Victor conceived on account of the acrimony of 



120 EXG-LISH COI^EEENCES. 

this letter proves that the Papacy was already 
born, and well born. He pretended to exconmiTi- 
nicate, to separate from the Universal Church, the 
most illustrious province, because it had not bent 
its traditions before the Roman discipline. He 
published a decree by virtue of which Asia was 
placed under the ban of the Christian community. 
But the other bishops opposed this violent meas- 
ure, and recalled Victor to charity. St. Irenseus, 
in particular, who, through the necessity of the 
country in which he lived, had accepted for him- 
self and his churches in Gaul the Occidental cus- 
tom, could not support the thought that the 
mother-chmx'hes of Asia, to which he felt himself 
bound in the depths of his soul, should be sep- 
arated from the body of the Universal Church. 
He energetically persuaded Victor from the ex- 
communication of the churches which held to the 
traditions of their fathers, and recalled to him 
the examples of his more tolerant predecessors. 
This act of rare good sense prevented the schism 
of the Orient and the Occident from occurring in 
the second century. Irenseus wrote to the bishops 
on all sides, and the question remained open to 
the churches of Asia. 

In one sense, the process which brought about 
the debate was of more importance than the 
debate itseK. By reason of this difference, the 
Church was brought to a clearer idea of its or- 



KOME AND CHEISTIANITY. 121 

ganization. And first it was evident that the 
laity were no longer any thing. The bishops 
alone handled questions, and promulgated their 
opinions. The bishops collected together in pro- 
vincial synods, over which the bishop of the capi- 
tal of the province presided (the archbishop of 
the future), or, at times, the oldest bishop. The 
synodal assembly came out with a letter, which 
was sent to other churches. This was then like an 
attempt at federative organization, — an attempt 
to resolve questions by means of provincial as- 
semblies, presided over by bishops agreeing among 
themselves. Later, questions concerning the pre- 
siding over synods and the hierarchy of the 
Church sought solution in the documents of this 
great debate. Among all the churches, that of 
Rome appeared to have a particular initiative 
right. But that initiative was far from being 
synonymous with infallibility; for Eusebius de- 
clares that he read the letters in which the bish- 
ops severely blamed the conduct of Victor. 

III. 

Authority, gentlemen, loves authority. The 
authoritaires, as we say to-day, in the most diverse 
ranks, extend the hand to each other. Men as 
conservative as the leaders of the Church of 
Rome must be strongly tempted to favor public 



122 ENGLISH CONFEBENCES. 

force, the effect of wMcli is often for good, as 
they must admit. This tendency had been mani- 
fest since the first days of Christianity. Jesus 
had laid down the rule. The image of the money 
was for him the supreme criterion of its lawful- 
ness, beyond which there was nothing to seek. 
In the height of the reign of Nero, St. Paul wrote, 
" Let every soul be subject unto the higher pow- 
ers. For there is no power but of God: the 
powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever, 
therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the ordi- 
nance of God." Some years later, Peter, or the 
person who wrote in his name the Epistle known 
as the First of Peter, " expresses himself in an 
identical manner. Clement was an equally de- 
voted subject of the Roman Empire. 

In fine, one of the traits of St. Luke (accord- 
ing to my idea there was a bond between St. Luke 
and the spirit of the church at Rome) is his 
respect of the imperial authority, and the precau- 
tions which he took not to injure it. The author 
of the Acts evaded every thing which would pre- 
sent the Romans as the enemies of Christ. On 
the contrary, he seeks to show, that, under many 
circumstances, they defended St. Paul and the 
Christians against the Jews. Never a disparaging 
word against the civil magistrates. Luke loved 
to show how the Roman functionaries were favor- 
able to the new religion, sometimes even embra- 



BOME AKD CHRISTIANITY. 123 

cing it; and how Roman justice was equitable, and 
superior to the passions of the local powers. He 
insists upon the advantages which Paul owed to 
his title of Roman citizen. If he ends his recital 
with the arrival of Paul at Rome, it is perhaps 
in order not to recount the monstrosities of Nero. 
Without doubt, there were in other parts of the 
empire devoted Christians who sympathized en- 
tirely with the anger of the Jews, and dreamed 
only of the destruction of the idolatrous city 
which they identified with Babylon. Such were 
the authors of apocalypses and sibylline writings. 
But the faithful of the great churches were of 
quite a different way of thinking. In 70, the 
Church of Jerusalem, with a sentiment more 
Christian than patriotic, left the revolutionary 
city, and sought peace beyond the Jordan. In 
the revolt of Barkokebas, the division was still 
more pronounced. Not a single Christian was 
willing to take part in this attempt of blind de- 
spair. St. Justin in his Apologies never combats 
the principle of empire. He desired that the 
empire should examine the Christian doctrine, 
approve and countersign it in some way, and con- 
demn those who calumniated it. The most learned 
doctor of the time of Marcus Aurelius, Meliton, 
Bishop of Sardis, made still more decided ad- 
vances, and undertook to show that there is alwiays 
in Christianity something to recommend it to a 



124 ENGLISH CONFERENCES. 

true Roman. In his Treaty upon Truth, preserved 
in Syriac, Meliton expresses himself in the same 
way as a bishop of the fourth century, explaining 
to one Theodosius that his first duty is to estab- 
lish by his authority the triumph of truth (with- 
out telling us, alas ! by what sign one recognizes 
truth). Let the empire become Christian, and 
the persecuted of to-day would find that the inter- 
ference of the state in the domain of conscience 
is perfectly legitimate. 

The system of the apologists, so warmly sus- 
tained by TertuUian, according to which the good 
emperors favored Christianity, and the bad ones 
persecuted it, was already full blown. " Born to- 
gether," said they, " Christianity and the empire 
have grown up together, and prospered together." 
Their interests, their sufferings, their fortunes, 
their future, — all was in common. The apolo- 
gists were advocates ; and advocates in all orders 
resemble each other. They have arguments for 
every situation and all tastes. Nearly a hundred 
and fifty years rolled on before these sweet and 
half sincere invitations were understood. But the' 
only impression they made in the time of Marcus 
Aurelius upon the mind of one of the most en- 
lightened leaders of the Church was as a prog- 
nostic of the future. Christianity and the empire 
will become reconciled. They are made for each 
other. The shade of Meliton will tremble with 



EOME AND CHRISTIANITY. 125 

joy when the empire becomes Christian, and the 
emperor takes in hand the cause of truth. 

Thus the Church already took more than one 
step toward empire. Through politeness, without 
doubt, but only as a very legitimate consequence 
of his principles, Meliton does not allow that an 
emperor can give an unjust order. It was easy to 
believe that certain emperors had not been abso- 
lutely opposed to Christianity. It is pleasant to 
relate that Tiberius had proposed to place Jesus 
in the rank of the gods : it was the senate which 
objected. The decided preference of Christianity 
for power where it hopes for favors is already very 
transparent. It is shown, contrary to all truth, 
that Hadrian and Antonine sought to repair the 
evil done by Nero and Domitian. TertuUian and 
his generation say the same thing of Marcus Aure- 
lius. TertuUian doubted, it is true, whether one 
could be at the same time a Caesar and a Chris- 
tian ; but this incompatibility a century later 
struck no one, and Constantine proved that Meli- 
ton of Sardis was a very sagacious man when he 
discerned so well — a century and a half in ad- 
vance, seeing through the proconsular persecutions 
— the possibility of a Christian Empire. 

The hatred of Christianity aud of the empire^ 
was that of men who must one day love them. 
Under the Severi, the language of the Church re- 
mained plaintive and tender, as it had been under 



126 EN^GLISH COIS^FERENCES. 

the Antonines. The apologists affixed a species 
of legitimism, a pretension that the Church had 
always from the first sainted the emperor. ^' There 
were never among us," said Tertnllian, " partisans 
of Cassins, partisans of Albinus, partisans of Ni- 
ger." Foolish illusion ! Certainly the revolt of 
Avidius Cassins against Marcus Aurelius was a 
political crime, and the Christians did well not to 
be involved in it. As for Severus, Albinus, and 
Niger, it was success that decided between them ; 
and the Churcli had no other merit in attaching 
itself to Severus than that of seeing clearly who 
would tlie be strongest. This pretended worship of 
legitimacy was in tjuth only the worship of a fixed 
fact. The principle of St. Paul bore fruit : '' All 
power comes from God : he who holds the sword 
holds it from God for good." 

Tliis correct attitude in regard to power clung 
to exterior necessities as much as to the principles 
which the Church had received from its founders. 
The Church was already a powerful association. It 
was essentially conservative. It needed order and** 
legal guaranties. This was admirably show^n in the 
act of Paul of Samos, Bishop of Antioch, under 
Aurelian. The Bishop of Antioch had become a 
powerful personage at this epoch. The goods of 
the Church were in his keeping : a crowd of men 
lived on his favors. Paul was a brilliant man, 
somewhat mystical, worldly, a great secular lord, 



ROME AND CHRISTIANITY. 127 

seeking to render Christianity acceptable to men 
of the world and authority. The Pietists, as 
might be expected, considered him heretical, and 
dismissed him. Paul resisted, and refused to quit 
the Episcopal house. See into what the most ex- 
alted sects are led ! They were in possession, and 
who could decide a question of proprietorship and 
possession, if not the civil authority. Aurelian, 
about this time, passed on his way towards 
Antioch; and the question was referred to him. 
Here Avas seen this original spectacle of an infidel 
sovereign and persecutor deputed to decide which 
was the true bishop. Aurelian showed under 
these circumstances remarkably good sense for a 
layman. He examined the correspondence of the 
two bishops, took note as to which was in relation 
with Rome and Italy, and decided that he was the 
true Bishop of Antioch. 

Aurelian made some objections to the theologi- 
cal reasoning used on this occasion ; but one fact 
was evident : it was, that Christianity could not 
live without the empire, and that the empire, on 
the other hand, could not do better than adopt 
Christianity as its religion. The world desired a 
religion of congregations, of churches, or of syna- 
gogues and chapels, — a religion in which the es- 
sence of the worship should be re-union, associa- 
tion, and fraternity. Christianity answered to all 
these conditions. Its admirable worship, its well- 
organized clergy, assured its future. 



128 ENGLISH CONFEEENCES. 

Several times in the third century this histori- 
cal necessity fell short of realization. This is seen 
most plainly under those Syrian emperors whom 
their quality of foreigners and base origin placed 
beyond prejudices, and who, in spite of their 
vices, inaugurated a largeness of ideas and a toler- 
ance hitherto unknown. Those Syrian women of 
Emesa, — Julia Domna, Julia Msesa, Julia Mam- 
msea, Julia Soemia, — beautiful, intelligent, per- 
fectly fearless, and held by no tradition or social 
law, hesitated at nothing. They did what Roman 
women would never have dared. They entered 
the Senate, deliberated there, and governed the 
empire effectively, dreaming of Semiramis and 
Nitocris. The Roman worship seemed cold and 
insignificant to them. Not being bound by any 
family reasons, and their imagination being more 
in harmony w^ith Christianity than with Italian 
Paganism, these women amused themselves with 
the recitals of the deed of the gods upon earth. 
Philostratus enchanted them with his ''Life of 
ApoUonius Tyane." Perhaps they had more than 
one secret affinity with Christianity. Certainly 
Heliogabalus was mad ; and yet his chimera of a 
central. Monotheistic worship, established at Rome, 
and absorbing all the other worships, proved that 
the narrow circle of ideas of the Antonines was 
broken. Alexander Severus went still farther. 
He was sympathetic with the Christians : not con- 



BOME AND CHEISTIANITY. 129 

tent with according tliem liberty, he placed Jesus 
in his lararium with a touching eclecticism. Peace 
seemed to be made, not, as under Constantine, by 
the defection of one of the parties, but by a large 
reconciliation. The same thing was seen again 
under Philip the Arab, in the East under Zenobia, 
and generally under those emperors whose foreign 
origin placed them beyond Roman patriotism. 

The struggle redoubled in rage when those 
grand reformers, Diocletian and Maximian, ani- 
mated by the ancient spirit, belieyed themselves 
able to give new life for the empire by holding it 
to the narrow circle of Roman ideas. The Church 
triumphed through its martyrs. Roman pride was 
humbled. Constantine saw the interior strength of 
the Church. The population of Asia Minor, Syria, 
Thrace, and Macedonia, in a word the eastern 
part of the empire, was already more than half 
Christian. His mother, who had been a servant in 
an inn at Kicomedia, dazzled his eyes with the 
picture of an Eastern empire having its centre near 
ISiicsea or Nicomedia, whose nerves should be the 
bishops and those multitudes of poor matriculates 
of the Church who" controlled opinion in large 
cities. Constantine made the empire Christian. 
From the Occidental point of view, that was as- 
tonishing; for the Christians were still but a 
feeble minority in the West: in the Orient, the 
politics of Constantine was. not only natural, but 
commanded. 



130 ENGLISH CONFEEENCES. 

Wonderful thing ! The city of Rome received 
from that politics the heaviest blow it had ever 
suffered. Christianity was successful under Con- 
stantine ; but it was Oriental Christianity. In 
building a new Rome on the Bosphorus, Constan- 
tine made the old Rome the capital of the West 
alone. The cataclysms which followed, the in- 
vasions of the barbarians who spared Constan- 
tinople, and fell upon Rome with all their weight, 
reduced the ancient capital of the world to a 
limited and often humble condition. That eccle- 
siastical primacy of Rome which burst with so 
much effect upon the second and third centuries 
flourished no longer when the Orient had an ex- 
istence and a separate capital. Constantine was 
the real author of the schism of the Latin Church 
and the Church of the Orient. 

Rome took its revenge, principally by the serious- 
ness and depth of its spirit of organization. What 
men were St. Sylvester, St. Damasus, and Gregory 
the Great ! With an admirable courage they la- 
bored for the conversion of the barbarians, attached 
them to themselves, and made them their friends 
and subjects. The master-work of its politics was 
its alliance with the Carlovingian house, and the 
bold stroke by which it re-established in that 
house the empire which had been dead three 
hundred years. The Church of Rome rose again 
more powerful than ever, and became 'again the 



EOME AND CHRISTIANITY. 131 

centre of all the grand affairs of the Occident 
during eight centuries. 

Here my task is ended, gentlemen. You will 
confide to others the care of recounting the pro- 
digious history of the feudal church, its grandeurs 
and its abuses. Another still will show you the 
re-action against these abuses, — Protestantism re- 
turning to the primitive idea of Christianity, and 
dividing, in its turn, the Latin Church. Each one 
of these grand historical pages will have its charm 
and its instruction. What I have recounted to 
you is full of grandeur. One is 'impartial only 
to the dead. Since Catholicism was an inimical 
power, a danger to the liberty of the human mind, 
it was right to oppose it. Our age is the age of 
history, because it is the age of doubt upon dog- 
matic matters: it is the age in wliich, without 
entering into the discussion of systems, an enlight- 
ened mind says to itself, '^ If, since right exists, and 
so many thousand symbols have made the preten- 
sion of presenting the complete truth, and if this 
pretension is always found vaisi, is it indeed prob- 
able that I shall be more happy than so many 
others, and that the truth has awaited my coming 
here below in order to make its definite revela- 
tion?" There is no definite revelation. It is 
the touching effort of man to render his destiny 
supportable. But its reward is not disdain, it is 



132 ENGLISH CONFERENCES. 

gratitude. Whoever believes that he has some- 
thing to teach us concerning our destiny and our 
end should be welcome. Eecall the account in 
your old histories of the judicious and discreet 
words of the Saxon chief of Northumbria, in the 
assembly where the question was discussed con- 
cerning the adoption of the doctrine of the Roman 
missionaries. 

''Perhaps thou rememberest, O king ! something 
which happens sometimes in the winter days, 
when thou art seated at table with thy captains 
and thy men-at-arms ; that a good fire is lighted, 
that thy chamber is very warm, while it rains, 
snows, and blows without. There comes a little 
bird, which crosses the chamber on the wing, 
entering at one door, and goiDg out by the other. 
The moment of this passage is full of sweetness 
for him : he no more feels the rain nor the storm. 
The bird is gone in an instant, and from the 
winter he passes again into the winter. Such 
seems to me the life of men on this earth, and its 
course of a moment, compared to the length of 
time whicli precedes and follows it. The time 
before birth and after death is gloomy. It tor- 
ments us by its impossibility of comprehension : 
if, then, the new doctrine can teach us any thing a 
little certain, it deserves to be considered." 

Alas ! the Roman missionaries did not bear 
this minimum of certainty, with which the old 



ROME AND CHRISTIANITY. 183 

Northumbrian chief, sa^ge as he was, declared him- 
self content. Life always appears to us a short 
passage between two long nights. Happy those 
who can sleep in the empty noise of menaces 
which trouble at times the human conscience, and 
should no more than cradle it ! One thing is cer- 
tain : it is the paternal smile which at certain 
hours pierces nature, attesting that one eye re- 
gards us, and one heart follows us. Let us guard 
ourselves from all absolute formula which might 
become one day an obstacle to the free expansion 
of our spirits. There is no religious communion 
which does not still possess some gifts of life and 
pardon ; but it is on the condition only that an 
humble docility succeeds sympathetic adhesion. 
The comparison of the regiment, invented by 
Clement Romanus, and since so many times re- 
peated, ought to be utterly abandoned. 

You wished that I should recall to you the gran- 
deurs of Catholicism in its finest epoch. I thank 
you for it. Some associations of childhood, the 
most profound of all, attach me to Catholicism ; 
and, although I am separated from it, I am often 
tempted to say, as Job said (at least in our Latin 
version), '^ Etiam si occideret me^ in ipso s-peraho,^'' 
This great Catholic family is too numerous not to 
have still a grand future. The strange excesses 
which it has supported during fifty j^ears, this un- 
equalled pontificate of Pius IX., the most aston- 



134 ENGLISH COXEE'EEKCES. 

ishing in history, cannot be terminated in any 
ordinary way. There will be thnnders and light- 
nings such as accompany all the great judgment- 
days of God. And will she have much to do in 
order to still remain acceptable to those who love 
her, — this old mother, who will not die so soon ? 
Perhaps she will find, in order to arrest the arms 
of her conqueror, which is modern reason, some 
magician's arts, some words such as Balder mur- 
mured. 

The Catholic Church is a woman : let us dis- 
trust the charming words of her agony. Let us 
hnagine that she says to us, "• My children, every 
thing here below is but a symbol and a dream. 
In this world there is only one little ray of light 
which pierces the darkness, and seems to be the 
reflection of a benevolent will. Come into my 
bosom, where one finds forgetfulness. For those 
who wish fetishes, I have them ; to those who 
wish works, I offer them ; for those who wish in- 
toxication of heart, I have the milk of my breast, 
which will make drunk ; for those who desire love, 
I have an abundance ; to those who crave irony, 
I pour out freely. Come all: the time of dog- 
matic sadness is past. I have music and incense 
for your funerals, flowers for your marriages, the 
joyous welcome of bells for your new-born ones." 
Ah, well ! if she should say that, our embarrass- 
ment would be extreme. But she never will. 



EOME AND CHEISTIANITY. 135 

Your great and glorious England lias resolved, 
gentlemen, the practical part of the question. It 
is as easy to trace the line of conduct which the 
state and individuals should follow in the same ' 
matter, as it is impossible to arrive at a theoretic 
solution of the religious problem. All this may 
be conveyed in a single word, gentlemen, — lib- 
erty. What could be more simple? Faith does 
not control itself. We believe Vv^hat we believe 
true. No one is bound to believe what he thinks 
false, whether it is false or not. To deny liberty of 
thought is a sort of contradiction. From liberty 
of thought to the right to express one's thought, 
there is but one step ; for right is the same for all. 
I have no right to prevent a person from express- 
ing his mind ; but no one has the right to prevent 
me from expressing mine. Here is a theory which 
will appear very humble to the learned doctors 
who believe themselves to be in possession of 
absolute truth. We have a great advantage over 
them, gentlemen. They are obliged to be perse- 
cutors in order to be consistent ; to us it is per- 
mitted to be tolerant, — tolerant for all, even for 
those, who, if they could, would not be so to us. 
Yes, let us even make this paradox: liberty is the 
best weapon against the enemies of liberty. Some 
fanatics say to us with sincerity, '' We take your 
liberty, because you owe it to us according to your 
principles ; but you shall not have ours, because 



186 ENGLISH CO:^rFERE]SrCES. 

we do not owe it to you." Ah, well I let us give 
them liberty all the same, and we do not imagine 
that in this exchange we shall be duped. No : 
liberty is the great dissolvent of all fanaticisms. 
In giving back liberty to my enemy, who would 
suppress me if he had the power, I shall really 
make him the worst gift. I oblige him to drink a 
strong beverage which shall turn his head, while I 
shall keep my own. Science supports the strange 
rSgime of liberty : fanaticism and superstition do 
not support it. We do more harm to dogmatism 
by treating it with an implacable sweetness than 
by persecuting it. By this sweetness we even in- 
culcate the principle which destroys all dogmatism 
at its root, by understanding that all metaphysical 
controversy is sterile, and that, for this reason, the 
truth for each one is as he believes it. The essen- 
tial, then, is not to silence dangerous teaching, and 
hush the discordant voice : the essential is to place 
the human mind in a state in which the mass can 
see the uselessness of its rage. When this spirit 
becomes the atmosphere of society, the fanatic can 
no longer live. He is conquered by a pervading 
gentleness. If, instead of conducting Polyeuctus 
to punishment, the Roman magistrate had dis- 
missed him smiling, and taken him amicably by 
the hand, Polyeuctus would not have continued : 
perhaps even in his old age he would have laughed 
at his escapade, and would have become a man of 
good sense. 



EoTAX Academy, London, Apeil 16, 1880. 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 



CONFERENCE AT THE EOYAL INSTI- 
TUTION. 

MAECUS AUEELIUS. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, — I have accepted 
with great pleasure the invitation to address you 
in this illustrious institution devoted to the noblest 
researches of science and of true philosophy. I 
have dreamed since my childhood of this island, 
where I have so many friends, and which I visit 
so tardily. 

I am a Briton of France. In our old books, 
England is always called the Island of the Saints ; 
and, in truth, all our saints of Armorican Brittany, 
those saints of doubtful orthodoxy, who, if they 
were again alive, would be more in harmony with 
us than with the Jesuits, came from the Island of 
Britain. I have seen in their chapel the trough of 
stone in which they crossed the sea. Of all races, 
the Britain race is that which has ever taken reli- 
gion the most seriously. Even when the progress 
of reflection has shown us that some articles among 
the catalogues of things which we have always 
regarded as fixed should be modified, we never 

139 



140 ENGLISH CONFERENCES. 

break away from the symbol under wliich we have 
from the first approved the ideal. 

For our faith is not contained in obscure meta- 
physical propositions: it is in the affirmations of 
the heart. I have therefore chosen for my dis- 
course to you, not one of those subtleties which 
divide, but one of those themes, dear to the soul, 
which bring nearer, and reconcile. I shall speak 
to you of that book resplendent with the divine 
spirit, that manual of submissive life which the 
most godly of men has left us, — the Caesar, Mar- 
cus Aurelius Antonine. It is the glory of sover- 
eigns that the most irreproachable model of virtue 
may be found in their ranks, and that the most 
beautiful lessons of patience and of self-control 
may come from a condition which one naturally 
believes to be subject to all the seductions of pleas- 
ure and of vanity. 



The inheritance of wisdom with a throne is 
always rare : I find in history but two striking 
examples of it, — in India, the succession of the 
three Mongol emperors, Baber, Hoomayoon, and 
Akbar ; at Rome, at the head of the greatest em- 
pire that ever existed, the two admirable reigns of 
Antonine the Pious and Marcus Aurelius. Of the 
last two, I consider Antonine the greatest. His 
goodness did not lead him into faults : he was not 



MARCUS AUEELIUS. 141 

tormented with that internal trouble which dis- 
turbed without ceasing the heart of his adopted 
son. This strange malady, this restless study of 
himself, this demon of scrupulousness, this fever 
of perfection, are signs of a less strong and distin- 
guished nature. As the finest thoughts are those 
which are not written, Antonine had in this respect 
also a superiority over Marcus Aurelius. But let 
us add that we should be ignorant of Antonine, if 
Marcus Aurelius had not transmitted to us that 
exquisite portrait of his adopted father, in which 
he seems to have applied himself, through humility, 
to painting the picture of a better man than him- 
self. 

It is he who has sketched in the first book 
of his '' Thoughts," — that admirable background 
where the noble and pure forms of his father, 
mother, grandfather, and tutors, move in a celes- 
tial light. Thanks to Marcus Aurelius, we are 
able to understand how these old Roman fami- 
lies, who had seen the reign of the wicked em- 
perors, still retained honesty, dignity, justice, the 
civil, and, if I may dare to say it, the republican 
spirit. They lived there in admiration of Cato, 
of Brutus, of Thrasea, and of the great stoics 
whose souls had never bowed under tyranny. 
The reign of Domitian was abhorred by them. 
The sages who had endured it without submission 
were honored as heroes. The accession of the 



142 ENGLISH CONFEREXCES. 

Antonines was only the coming to power of the 
society of sages, of whose just anger Tacitus has 
informed us, — a society of wise men formed by 
the leao'ue of all those who had revolted ao-ainst 
the despotism of the first Caesars. 

The salutary principle of adoption made the 
imperial court of the second century a true cradle 
of virtue. The noble and learned Xerva, in estab- 
lishing this principle, assured the happiness of the 
human race during almost a hundred years, and 
gave to the world the best century of progress of 
which any knowledge has been preserved. The 
sovereignty thus possessed in common by a group 
of choice men who delegated it or shared it, ac- 
cording to the needs of the moment, lost a part of 
that attraction which renders it so dangerous. 

Men came to the throne without seeking it, but 
also without the right of birth, or in any sense 
the divine right : men came there understanding 
themselves, experienced, having been long pre- 
pared. The empire was a ci^il burden which 
each accepted in his turn, without dreaming of 
hastening the hour. Marcus Aurelius was made 
emperor so young, that the idea of ruling had 
scarcely occurred to him, and had not for a mo- 
ment exercised its charm upon his mind. 

At eight years, when he was nlxed^dj j^^'cesul of 
the Salian priests, Hadrian remarked this sad 
child, and loved him for his good-nature, his 



MARCUS AUE.ELIUS. 143 

docility, and his incapability of falsehood. At 
eighteen years the empire was assured to hmi. 
He awaited it patiently for twenty-two years. 
The evening when Antonine, feeling himself 
about to die, after having given to the tribune 
the watchword, ^quanimitas^ commanded the 
golden statue of Fortune, which was always in 
the apartment of the emperor, to be borne into 
that of his adopted son, he experienced neither 
surprise nor joy. 

He had long been sated with all joys, without 
having tasted them : he had seen the absolute 
vanity of them by the profoundness of his phi- 
losophy. 

The great inconvenience of practical life, and 
that which renders it insupportable to a superior 
man, is, that, if one carries into it the principles 
of the ideal, talents become defects ; so that very 
often the accomplished man is less successful in 
it than one who is fitted by egotism or ordinary 
routine. Three or four times the virtue of Marcus 
Aurelius came near being his ruin. The first 
fault into which it led him was that of sharing 
the empire with Lucius Verus, to whom he was 
under no obligation. Verus was a frivolous and 
worthless man. Prodigies of goodness and deli- 
cacy were necessary in order to prevent his com- 
mitting disastrous follies. The wise emperor, 
earnest and industrious, took with him in his 



144 ENGLISH CONTEREXCES. 

lectica (sedan) the senseless colleague wliom he 
had given himself. He persisted in treating him 
seriously: he never once revolted against this 
sorry companionship. Like all well-bred men, 
Marcus Aurelius discommoded himself continu- 
ally : his manners came from a general habit of 
firmness and dignity. Souls of this kind, either 
from respect for human nature, or in order not to 
wound others, resign themselves to the appear- 
ance of seeing no evil. Their life is a perpetual 
dissimulation. 

According to some, he even deceived himself, 
since, in his intimate intercourse with the gods, 
on the borders of the Granicus, speaking of his 
unworthy wife, he thanked them for having given 
him a wife " so amiable, so affectionate, so pure." 
I have shown elsewhere that the patience, or, if 
one chooses, the weakness, on this point, of Marcus 
Aurelius, has been somewhat exaggerated. Faus- 
tina had faults : the gr'eatest one was that she dis- 
liked the friends of her husband ; and, as these 
friends wrote history, she has paid the penalty 
before posterity. But a discriminating critic has 
no trouble in showing the exaggerations of the 
legend. Every thing indicates that Faustina at 
first found happiness and love in that villa at 
Lorium, or in that beautiful retreat at Lanuvium 
upon the highest points of the Alban mount, 
which Marcus Aurelius described to his tutor 



MABCXJS AURELnJS. 145 

Fronto as an abode full of the purest joys. 
Then she became weary of too much wisdom. 
Let us tell all : the beautiful sentences of Marcus 
Aurelius, his austere virtue, his perpetual mel- 
ancholy, might have become tiresome to a young 
and capricious woman possessed of an ardent tem- 
perament and marvellous beauty. He understood 
it, suffered it, and spoke not. Faustina remained 
always his ''very good and very faithful wife." 
No one succeeded, even after her death, in per- 
suading him to give up this pious lie. In a bas- 
relief which is still seen in the Museum of the 
Capitol at Rome, while Faustina is borne to heaven 
by a messenger of the gods, the excellent emperor 
regards her with a look full of love. It seems 
that at last he had deceived himself, and forgotten 
all. But through what a struggle he must have 
passed in order to do this ! During long years, 
a sickness at heart slowly consumed him. The 
desperate effort which was the essence of his 
philosophy, this frenzy of renunciation, carried 
sometimes even to sophism, concealed an immense 
wound at the bottom. How necessary it must 
have been to bid adieu to happiness in order to 
reacli such an excess ! No one will ever under- 
stand all that this poor wounded heart suffered, 
the bitterness which that pale face concealed, 
always calm, always smiling. It is true that the 
farewell to happiness is the beginning of wisdom 



146 ENGLISH CONFEBENCES. 

and the surest means of finding peace. There is 
nothing so sweet as the return of joy which fol- 
lows the renunciation of joy ; nothing so keen, so 
profound, so charming, as the enchantment of the 
disenchanted. 

Some historians, more or less imbued with that 
policy which believes itself to be superior, because 
it is not suspected of any philosophy, have natu- 
rally sought to prove that so accomplished a man 
was a bad administrator and a mediocre sovereign. 
It appears, in fact, that Marcus Aurelius sinned 
more than once by too much lenity. But never 
was there a reign more fruitful in reforms and 
progress. The public charity founded by Nerva 
and Trajan was admirably developed by him. 
-N€W schools were established for poor children; 
the superintendents of provisions became function- 
aries of the first rank, and were chosen with 
extreme care ; while the wants of poor young girls 
were cared for by the Institute of Jeunes Fausti- 
niennes. The principle that the state has duties in 
some degree paternal towards its members (a prin- 
ciple which should be remembered with gratitude, 
even when it has been dispensed with), — this prin- 
ciple, I say, was^ proclaimed for the first time in 
the world by Trajan and his successors. Neither 
the puerile pomp of Oriental kingdoms, founded 
on the baseness and stupidity of men, nor the 
pedantic pride of the kingdoms of the middle 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 147 

ages, founded on an exaggerated sentiment for 
hereditary succession, and on a simple faith in the 
rights of blood, could give an idea of the utterly- 
republican sovereignty of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, 
Antonine, and Marcus Aurelius. 

Nothing of the prince by hereditary or divine 
right, nothing of the military chieftain : it was a 
sort of grand civil magistracy, without resembling 
a court in any way, or depriving the emperor of 
his private character. Marcus Aurelius, in par- 
ticular, was neither much nor little a king in the 
true sense of the word. His fortune was immense, 
but all employed for good : his aversion for "• the 
Caesars," whom he considered as a species of Sar- 
danapali, magnificent, debauched, and cruel, burst 
out at each instant. The civility of his manners 
was extreme. He gave to the Senate all its an- 
cient importance : when he was at Rome, he never 
missed a session, and left his place only when the 
Consul had pronounced the formula, " Nihil vos 
moramar^ patres conscripUy Almost every year 
of his reign he made war, and he made it well, 
although he found in it only ennui. His listless 
campaigns against the Quadi and Marcomanni 
were very well conducted: the disgust which he 
felt for them did not prevent his most conscien- 
tious attention to them. It was in the course of 
one of these expeditions, that, encamped on the 
banks of the Granicus, in the midst of the monoto- 



148 ENGLISH CONFERENCES. 

nous plains of Hungary, he wrote the most beau- 
tiful pages of the exquisite book which has re- 
vealed his whole soul to us. It is probable, that, 
when very young, he kept a journal of his secret 
thoughts. He inscribed there the maxims to 
which he had recourse in order to fortify himself, 
the reminiscences of his favorite authors, the pas- 
sages of the moralists which appealed most to him, 
the principles which had sustained him through 
the day, sometimes the reproaches which his scru- 
pulous conscience addressed to him. " One seeks 
for himself solitary retreats, rustic cottages, sea- 
shore, or mountains : like others, thou lovest to 
dream of these good things. To what end, since 
it is permitted to thee to retire within thy soul 
each hour? Man has nowhere a more tranquil 
retreat, above all, if he has within himself those 
things, the contemplation of which will calm him. 
Learn, then, how to enjoy this retreat, and there 
renew thy strength. Let there be there those 
short fundamental maxims, which above all will 
give again serenity to thy soul, and restore thee to 
a state in which to support with resignation the 
world to which thou shouldest return." 

During the sad winters of the North, this conso- 
lation became still more necessary to him. He 
was nearly sixty years old: old age was prema- 
ture with him. One evening all the pictures of 
his pious 3'outh returned to his remembrance, and 



MAECUS AURELIUS. 149 

he passed some delicious hours in calculating how 
much he owed to each one of the virtuous beings 
who had surrounded him. 

"Examples of my grandfather Verus, — sweet- 
ness of manners, unchangeable patience." 

" Qualities which one valued in my father, the 
souvenir which he has left me, — modesty, manly 
character." 

"To imitate the piety of my mother, her be- 
nevolence; to abstain, like her, not only from 
doing evil, but from conceiving the thought of it ; 
to lead her frugal life, which so little resembled 
the habitual luxury of the rich." 

Then appeared to him, in turn, Diagnotus, who 
had inspired him with a taste for philosophy, and 
made agreeable to his eyes the pallet, the covering 
made of a simple skin, and all the apparel of Hel- 
lenic discipline; Junius Rusticus, who taught 
him to avoid all affectation of elegance in style, 
and loaned him the Conversations of Epictetus; 
ApoUonius of Chalcis, who realized the Stoic ideal 
of extreme firmness and perfect sweetness ; Sextus 
of Chaeroneia, so grave and so good ; Alexander 
the grammarian, who censured with such refined 
politeness ; Fronto, " who taught him the envy, 
duplicity, and hypocrisy of a tyrant, and the hard- 
ness which may exist in the heart of a patrician ; " 
his brother Severus, " who made him understand 
Thrasia, Helvidius, Cato, Brutus, who gave him 



150 ENGLISH CONFEEENCES. 

the idea of what a free goyernment is, where the 
rule is the natural equality of the citizens and the 
equality of their rights ; of a royalty which places 
before all else the respect for the liberty of the 
ctizens ; " and, rising above all others in his im- 
maculate grandeur, Antonine, his father by adop- 
tion, whose picture he traces for us with redoubled 
gratitude and love. " I thank the gods," said he 
finally, "• for having given me good ancestors, good 
parents, a good sister, good teachers, and in my 
surroundings, in my relations, in my friends, men 
almost all filled with goodness. I never allowed 
myself to be wanting in deference towards them : 
from my natural disposition, I could sometimes 
have shown irreverence ; but the benevolence of 
the gods never permitted the occasion to present 
itself. I am also indebted to the gods, who pre- 
served pure the flower of my youth, for having 
been reared under the rule of a. prince, and a 
father who strove to free my soul from all trace of 
pride, to make me ^understand that it is possible, 
while living in a palace, to dispense with guards, 
with splendid clothes, with torches, with statues, 
to teach me, in short, that a prince can almost 
contract his life within the limits of that of a 
simple citizen, without, on that account, showing 
, less nobility and vigor when he comes to be an 
emperor, and transact the affairs of state. They 
gave me a brother, whose manners were a con- 



MAECUS AURELIUS. 151 

tinual exhortation to watch over myself, while his 
deference and attachment should have made the 
joy of my heart. 

" Thanks to the gods again, that I have made 
haste to raise those who have cared for my educa- 
tion, to the honors which they seemed to desire. 
They have enabled me to understand Apollonius, 
Rusticus, Maximus, and have held out to me, sur- 
rounded with brilliant light, the picture of a life 
conformed to nature. I have fallen short of it in 
the end, it is true ; but it is my fault. If my body 
has long supported the rude life which I lead ; if, 
in spite of my frequent neglect of Rusticus, I have 
never overstepped the bounds, or done any thing 
of which I should repent ; if my mother, who died 
young, was able, nevertheless, to pass her last 
years near me ; if, whenever I have wished to suc- 
cor the poor or afflicted, money has never been 
wanting; if I have never needed to accept any 
thing from others ; if I have a wife of an amiable, 
affectionate, and pure character ; if I have found 
many capable men for the education of my chil- 
dren ; if, at the beginning of my passion for phi- 
losophy, I did not become the prey of a sophist, — 
it is to the gods that I owe it all. Yes, so many 
blessings could only be the result of the aid of the 
gods and a happy fortune." 

This divine candor breathes in every page. No 
one has ever written more simply than did he for 



152 ENGLISH CONFEBENCES. 

the sole purpose of unburdening his heart to God, 
his only witness. There is not a shadow of system 
in it. Marcus Aurelius, to speak exactly, had no 
philosophy : although he owed almost every thing 
to stoicism transformed by the Roman spirit, it is 
of no school. According to our idea, he has too 
little curiosity ; for he knows not all that a con- 
temporary of Ptolemy- and Galen should know : he 
has some opinions on the system of the world, 
which were not up to the highest science of his 
time. But his moral thought, thus detached from 
all alliance with a system, reaches a singular 
height. The author of the book, "The Imita- 
tion," himself, although free from the quarrels of 
the schools, does not rise to this, for his manner 
of feeling is essentially Christian. Take away his 
Christian dogmas, and his book retains only a por- 
tion of its charm. The book of Marcus Aurelius, 
haying no dogmatic base, preserves its freshness 
eternally. Every one, from the atheist, or he who 
believes himself one, to the man who is the most 
devoted co the especial creeds of each worship, can 
find in it some fruits of edification. It is the most 
purely human book which exists. It deals with 
no question of controversy. In theology, Marcus 
Aurelius floats between pure Deism, Polytheism 
interpreted in a physical sense according to the 
manner of the Stoics, and a sort of cosmic 
Pantheism. He holds not much more firmly to 



MAECUS AURELIUS. 153 

one hypothesis than to the other, and he uses in- 
discriminately the three vocabularies of the Deist, 
Polytheist, and Pantheist. His considerations 
have always two sides, according as God and the 
soul have, or have not, reality. It is the reason- 
ing which we do each hour ; for, if the most com- 
plete Materialism is right, we who have believed 
in truth and goodness shall be no more duped 
than others. If Idealism is right, we have been 
the true sages, and we have been wise in the only 
manner which becomes us, that is to say, with no 
selfish waiting, without having looked for a re- 
muneration. 

II. 

We here touch a great secret of moral philoso- 
phy and religion. Marcus Aurelius has no specu- 
lative philosophy; his theology is utterly contra- 
dictory; he has no idea founded upon the soul 
and immortality. How could he be so moral 
without the beliefs that are now regarded as the 
foundations of morality ? how so profoundly reli- 
gious, without having professed one of the dogmas 
of what is called natural religion? It is impor- 
tant to make this inquiry. 

The doubts, which, to the view of speculative 
reason, hover above the truths of natural religion, 
are not, as Kant has admirably shown, accidental 
doubts, capable of being removed, belonging, as is 



154 ENGLISH CONFERENCES. 

sometimes imagined, to certain conditions of the 
human mind. These doubts are inherent to the 
nature even of these truths, if one may say it with- 
out a paradox ; and, if these doubts were removed, 
the truths with which they quarrel would disap- 
pear at the same time. Let us suppose, in short, 
a direct, positive proof, evident to all, of future 
sufferings and rewards : where will be the merit 
of doing good ? They would be but fools whom 
gayety of heart should hasten to damnation. A 
crowd of base souls would secure their salvation 
without concealment: they would, in a sense, 
force the divine power. Who does not see, that, 
in such a system, there is neither morality nor 
religion? In the moral and religious order it is 
indispensable to believe without demonstration. 
It deals not with certainty : it acts by faith. This 
is what Deism forgets, with its habits of intemper- 
ate affirmatioi;. It forgets that creeds too precise 
concerning human destiny would destroy all moral 
merit. For us, they would say that we should do 
as did St. Louis when he was told of the miracu- 
lous wafer, — we should refuse to see it. What 
need have we of these brutal proofs which tram- 
mel our liberty ? 

We should fear to become assimilated to those 
speculators in virtue, or those vulgar cowards, 
who mingle with spiritual things the gross selfish- 
ness of practical life. In the days which followed 



MARCUS aue:^lius. 155 

the belief in the resurrection of Jesus, this senti- 
ment was manifested in the most touching man- 
ner. The faithful in heart, the sensitive ones, 
preferred to believe without seeing. "Blessed 
are they that have not seen, and yet have be- 
lieved," became the word for the time. Charming 
words ! Eternal symbol of tender and generous 
Idealism, which has a horror of touching with the 
hands that which should only be seen with the 
heart! 

Our good Marcus Aurelius, on this point as on 
all others, was in advance of the ages. He never 
cared to argue with himself concerning God and 
the soul. As if he had read the "- Criticism of 
Practical Reason," he saw clearly, that, where the 
Infinite is concerned, no formula is absolute; 
and that, in such matters, one has no chance of 
seeing the truth during his life, without much 
self-contradiction. He distinctly separates moral 
beauty from all theoretical theology. He allows 
duty to depend on no metaphysical opinion of the 
First Cause. The intimate union with an unseen 
god was never carried to a more unheard-of deli- 
cacy. '' To offer to the government of God that 
which is within thee, — a strong being ripened by 
age, a friend of the public good, a Roman, an em- 
peror, a soldier at his post awaiting the signal of 
the trumpet, a man ready to quit life without 
regret." " There are many grains of incense des- 



166 ENGLISH CONEEEEKCES. 

tined to the same altar : one falls sooner, the other 
later, in the fire ; but the difference is nothing/' 
" Man should live according to nature during the 
few days that are given him on the earth, and, 
when the moment of leaving it comes, should 
submit himseK sweetly, as an olive, which, in 
falling, blesses the tree which has produced it, 
and renders thanks to the branch which has borne, 
it." " All that which thou arrangest is suited to 
me, O Cosmos ! Nothing of that which comes 
from thee is premature or backward to me. I 
find my fruit in that which thy seasons bear, O 
Nature I From thee conies all ; in thee is all ; to 
thee all returns." " O man ! thou hast been a 
citizen in the great city : what matters it to thee 
to have ^ remained three or five years? That 
which is governed by laws is unjust for no one. 
What is there, then, so sorrowful in being sent 
from the city, not by a tyrant, not by an unjust 
judge, but by the same nature which allowed thee 
to enter there? It is as if a comedian is dis- 
charged from the theatre by the same prsetor who 
engaged him. But wilt thou say, ' I have not 
played the five acts ; I have played but three ? ' 
Thou say est well ; but in life three acts suffice 
to complete the entire piece. . . . Go, then, con- 
tent, since he who dismisses thee is content." 

Is this to say that he never revolted against the 
strange fate which leaves man alone face to face 



MAECUS AUEELIUS. 167 

with the needs of devotion, of sacrifice, of hero- 
ism, and nature with its transcendent immorality, 
its supreme disdain for virtue? No. Once at 
least the absurdity, the colossal iniquity, of death, 
strikes him. But soon his temperament, com- 
pletely mortified, resumes its power, and he be- 
comes calm. '' How happens it that the gods, who 
have ordered all things so well, and with so much 
love for men, should have forgotten one thing 
only; that is, that men of tried virtue, who 
during their lives have had a sort of interchange 
of relations with divinity, who have made them- 
selves loved by it on account of their pious acts 
and their sacrifices, live not after death, but may 
be extinguished forever ? 

"Since it is so, be sure, that, if it should be 
otherwise, they (the gods) would not have failed ; 
for, if it had been just, it would have been pos- 
sible ; if it had been suitable to nature, nature 
would have permitted it. Consequently, when 
it is not thus, strengthen thyself in this con- 
sideration, that it was not necessary that it should 
be thus. Thou thyself seest plainly that to make 
such a demand is to dispute his right with God. 
Now, we would not thus contend with the gods 
if they were not absolutely good and absolutely 
just: if they are so, they have allowed nothing 
to make a part of the order of the world which 
is contrary to justice and right." 



168 ENGLISH COKFEEENCES. 

Ah! is it too mucli resignation, ladies and 
gentlemen ? If it is veritably thus, we have the 
right to complain. To say, that, if this world has 
not its counterpart, the man who is sacrificed to 
truth or right ought to leave it content, and 
absolve the gods, — that is too yia'ive. Xo, he has 
a right to blaspheme them. For, in short, why 
has his credulity been thus abused? Why should 
he have been endowed with deceitful instincts, of 
which he has been the honest dupe ? Wherefore 
is this premium given to the frivolous or wicked 
man ? Is it, then, he who is not deceived who is 
the wise man? Then cursed be the gods who so 
adjudge their preferences I I desire that the 
future may be an enigma ; but, if there is no 
future, then this world is a frightful ambuscade. 
Take notice that our wish is not that of the 
vulgar clown. We wish not to see the chastise- 
ment of the culpable, nor to meddle with the 
interests of our virtue. Our wish has no selfish- 
ness : it is simply to be, to remain in accord with 
light, to continue the thought we have begun, to 
know more of it, to enjoy some day that truth 
which we seek with so much labor, to see the 
triumph of the good which we have loved. Noth- 
ing is more legitimate. The worthy emperor, 
moreover, was also sensible of it : '' What ! the 
light of a lamp burns until the moment in which 
it is extinguished, and loses nothing of its bril- 



MAECUS AIJBELTUS. 159 

liancy, and the truth, justice, temperance, which 
are in thee shall be extinguished with thee ! " All 
his life was passed in this noble hesitation. If he 
sinned, it was through too much piety. Less 
resigned, he would have been more just; for 
surely to demand that there should be an inti- 
mate and sympathetic witness of the struggles 
which we endure for goodness and truth is not 
to ask too much. 

It is possible, also, that if his philosophy had 
been less exclusively moral, if it had implied a 
more curious study of history and of the universe, 
it would have escaped a certain excessive rigor. 
Like the ascetic Christians, Marcus Aurelius some- 
times carried renunciation to dryness and subtlety. 
One feels that this calmness, which never belies 
itself, is obtained through an immense effort. 
Certainly, evil had never an attraction for him : 
he had no passion to struggle against. " Whatever 
one may do or say," writes he, " it is necessary 
that I should be a good man ; as the emerald 
might say, ' Whatever one may say or do, I must 
remain an emerald, and retain my color.' " But, in 
order to hold one's self always upon the icy sum- 
mit of stoicism, it is necessary to do cruel violence 
to nature, and to cut away from it more than one 
noble element. This perpetual repetition of the 
same reasoning, the thousand figures under which 
he seeks to represent to himself the vanity of all 



160 ENGLISH CONFEREKCES. 

things, these frequently artless proofs of universal 
frivolity, testify to strifes which he has passed 
through in order to extinguish all desire in him- 
self. At times we find in it something harsh and 
sad. The reading of Marcus Aurelius strengthens, 
but it does not console : it leaves a void in the 
soul which is at once cruel and delightful, which 
one would not exchange for full satisfaction. 
Humility, renunciation, severity towards self, were 
never carried further. Glory — that last illusion 
of great souls — is reduced to nothingness. It is 
needful to do right without disturbing one's self 
as to whether any one knows that we do it. He 
perceives that history will speak of him : he some- 
times dreams of the men of the past with whom 
the future will associate him. "If they have 
only played the part of tragic actors," said he, 
" no one has condemned me to imitate them." 
The absolute mortification at which he had ar- 
rived had destroyed the last fibre of self-love in 
him. 

The consequences of this austere philosophy 
might have been hardness and obstinacy. It is 
here that the rare goodness of the nature of 
Marcus Aurelius shines out in its full brilliancy. 
His severity is only for himself. The fruit of this 
great tension of soul is an infinite benevolence. 
All his life was a study of how to return good for 
evil. At evening, after some sad experience of 



MARCUS AUEELIUS. 161 

human perversity, he wrote only as follows : " If 
thou canst, correct them; on the other hand, re- 
member that thou shouldest exercise benevolence 
towards those who have been given to thee. The 
gods themselves are benevolent to men : they aid 
them, — so great is their goodness I — to acquire 
health, riches, glory. Thou art permitted to be 
like the gods." Another day, some one was very 
wicked ; for see what he wrote upon his tablets : 
" Such is the order of nature : men of this sort must 
act thus from necessity. To wish it to be other- 
wise is to wish that the fig-tree shall bear no figs. 
Remember, thou, in one word, this thing : in a 
very short time thou and he will die ; soon after, 
your names even will be known no more." The 
thoughts of a universal pardon recur without 
ceasing. At times a scarcely perceptible smile is 
mingled with this charming goodness, — '' The best 
method of avenging one's self upon the wicked is 
not to be like them ; " or a light stroke of pride, — 
" It is a royal thing to hear evil said of one's self 
when one does right." One day he thus re- 
proached himseK: " Thou hast forgotten," said he, 
" what holy relationship unites each man to the 
human race, — a relationship not of blood, or of 
birth, but the participation in the same intelli- 
gence. Thou hast forgotten that the reasoning 
power of each one is a god, derived from the 
Supreme Being.',' 



162 ENGLISH CONFEREN^CES. 

In the business of life he was always exact, 
although a little ingenuous, as very good men usu- 
ally are. The nine reasons for forbearance which 
he Yaluecl for himself (book xi. art. 18) show us 
his charming good-nature before family troubles, 
which perhaps came to him through his unwor- 
thy son. "- If, upon occasion," said he to himself, 
'' thou exhortest him quietly, and shalt give to him 
without anger some lessons like these, — ' No, my 
child ; we are born for each other. It is not I who 
suffer the evil, it is thou who doest it thyself, my 
child ! ' — show him adroitly, by a general consider- 
ation, that such is the rule ; that neither the bees, 
nor the animals who live naturally in herds, re- 
semble him. Say this without mockery or insult, 
with an air of true affection, with a heart which is 
not excited by anger ; not as a pedant, not for the 
sake of being admired by those who are present ; 
think only of him." 

Commodus (if it was for him that he thus acted) 
was, without doubt, little touched by this good 
paternal rhetoric. One of the maxims of the ex- 
cellent emperor was, that the wicked are unhappy, 
that one is only wicked in spite of himself, and 
through ignorance. He pitied those who were not 
like himself : he did not believe that he had the 
right to obtrude himself upon them. 

He well understood the baseness of men; but 
he did not avow it. This willing blindness is the 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 163 

defect of choice spirits. The world not being all 
that they could wish, they lie to themselves in 
order not-to see it as it is. From thence arises an 
expediency in their judgments. In Marcus Aure- 
lius, this expediency sometimes provokes us a little. 
If we wished to believe him, his instructors, several 
of whom were men of mediocrity, were, without 
exception, superior men. One would say that every 
one near him had been virtuous. This is carried 
to such a point, that one is forced to ask if the 
brother for whom he pronounces such a grand 
eulogy in his thanks to the gods was not his 
adopted brother, Lucius Verus. It is certain that 
the good emperor was capable of strong illusions 
when he undertook to lend to others his own vir- 
tues. 

This quality, expressed as an ancient opinion, 
especially by the pen of the Emperor Julian, 
caused him to commit an enormous error, which 
was that of not disinheriting Commodus. Tliis is 
one of those things which it is easy to say at a 
distance, when there are no obstacles present, and 
when one reasons without facts. It is forgotten 
at first that the emperors, who, after Nerva, made 
adoption so fruitful a political system, had no 
sons. Adoption, with the exheredatioh of the son 
or grandson, occurred in the first century of the 
empire without good results. Marcus Aurelius 
was evidently from principle in favor of direct 



164 ENGLISH CONFERENCES. 

inheritance, in which he saw the advantage of the 
prevention of competition. 

After the birth of Commodus, in 161, he pre- 
sented him alone to the people, although he had a 
twin-brother : he frequently took him in his arms 
and renewed this act, which was a sort of procla- 
mation. In 166 Lucius Verus demanded that the 
two sons of Marcus, Commodus and Annius Verus, 
should be made Caesars. In 172 Commodus 
shared with his father the title of Germanicus. In 
173, after the repression of the revolt of Avidius, 
the Senate, in order to recognize in some way the 
family disinterestedness which Marcus Aurelius 
had shown, demanded by acclamation the empire 
and the tribunitial power for Commodus. 

Already the natural wickedness of the latter 
had betrayed itself by more than one symptom 
known to his tutors ; but how shall one foresee 
the future from a few naughty acts of a child of 
twelve years? In 176-177 his father made him 
Imperator^ Consul, Augustus. This was certainly 
an imprudence; but he was bound by his previous 
acts: Commodus, moreover, still restrained him- 
self. In later years, the evil completely revealed 
itself. On each page of the last books of the 
" Thoughts," we see the trace of the martyr with- 
in the excellent father, of the accomplished em- 
peror, who saw a monster growing up beside him, 
ready to succeed him, and to take in every thing 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 165 

through antipathy, the opposite course from that 
which he had believed to be for the good of men. 
The thought of disinheriting Commodus must, 
without doubt, have come often to Marcus Aure- 
lius. But it was too late. After having associat- 
ed him in the empire, after having so many times 
proclaimed him to the legions as perfect and ac- 
complished, to come before the world and declare 
him to be unworthy would be a scandal. Marcus 
was caught in his own phrases, by that style of 
benevolent expediency which was too habitual 
with him. And, after all, Commodus was only 
seventeen years old : who could be sure that he 
would not reform ? Even after the death of Mar- 
cus Aurelius this was hoped for. Commodus at 
first showed the intention of following the coun- 
sels of meritorious persons with whom his father 
had surrounded him. 

The reproach which is made, then, against 
Marcus Aurelius, is not that of not having, but of 
having, a son. It was not his fault if the age 
could not support so much wisdom. In philoso- 
phy, the great emperor had placed the ideal of 
virtue so high, that no one would care to follow 
him. In politics, his benevolent optimism had 
enfeebled the state services, above all, the army. 
In religion, in order not to be too much bound by 
a religion of the state, of which he saw the weak- 
ness, he prepared the great triumph of the non- 



166 ENGLISH CONFERENCES. 

official worship, and left a reproach to hover above 
his memory, — unjust, it is true; but even its 
shadow should not be found in so pure a life. We 
touch here upon one of the most delicate points in 
the biography of Marcus Aurelius. It is unhap- 
pily certain, that, under his reign. Christians were 
condemned to death, and executed. The policy of 
his predecessors had been firm in this particular. 
Trajan, Antonine, Hadrian himself, saw in the 
Christians a secret sect, anti-social, dreaming of 
overturning the empire. Like all men true to the 
old Roman principles, they believed in the neces- 
sity of repressing them. There was no need of 
special edicts: the laws against the coetus illicit^ 
the illicita collegia^ were numerous. The Chris- 
tians fell in the most explicit sense under the 
force of these laws. Truly, it would have been 
worthy of the wise emperor who introduced so 
many reforms full of humanity, to suppress the 
edicts which entailed such cruel and unjust conse- 
quences. But it is necessary to observe primarily, 
that the true spirit of liberty, as we understand it, 
was not then understood by any one ; and that 
Christianity, when it was master, practised it no 
more than the Pagan emperors. In the second 
place, the abrogation of the laws against illicit 
societies would have been the ruin of the empire, 
founded essentially upon the principle that the 
state ought not to admit within its bosom any 



MAECUS AURELIUS. 167 

society differing from it. The principle was bad, 
according to our ideas : it is very certain, at least, 
that it was the corner-stone in the Roman consti- 
tution. Marcus Aurelius, far from exaggerating 
it, extenuated it with all his powers ; and one of 
the glories of his reign is the extension of the 
right of association. However, he did not go to 
the root : he did not completely abolish the laws 
against the collegia illieita^ and in the provinces 
there resulted from them some processes infinitely 
to be regretted. The reproach which can be 
made against him is the same that might be made 
to the rulers of our day, who do not suppress 
with a stroke of the pen all the laws restrictive of 
the liberties of re-union, of association, and of the 
press. 

From the distance at which we stand, we can 
see that Marcus Aurelius, in being more com- 
pletely liberal, would have been wiser. Perhaps 
Christianity left free would have developed in a 
manner less disastrous the theocratic and absolute 
principle which was in it ; but one cannot reproach 
a man with not having stirred up a radical revolu- 
tion on account of a prevision of what would 
occur several centuries after him. Trajan, Ha- 
drian, Antonine, Marcus Aurelius, could not know 
the principles of general history and political 
economy which have been understood only in 
our time, and which only our last revolutions 



168 ENGLISH CONFERENCES. 

could reveal. In any case, the mansuetude of the 
good emperor was in this respect shielded from all 
reproach. No one has the right to be more exact- 
iDg in this respect than was TertuUian. " Consult 
your annals," said he to the Roman magistrates. 
"You will then see that the princes who have 
been severe towards us are of those who have 
held to the honor of having been our persecutors. 
* On the contrary, all the princes who have respected 
divine and human laws include but one who per- 
secuted the Christians. We can even name one 
of them who declared himself their protector, — 
the wise Marcus Aurelius. If he did not openly 
revoke the edicts against our brethren, he 
destroyed their power by the severe penalties 
which he declared against their accusers." It is 
necessary to remember that the Roman Empire 
was ten or twelve times as large as France, and 
that the responsibility of the emperor was very 
little in the judgments which were rendered in 
the provinces. It is necessary, moreover, to recall 
the fact that Christianity claimed not only the 
liberty of worship : all the creeds which tolerated 
each other were allowed much freedom in the em- 
pire. Christianity and Judaism were the excep- 
tions to this rule on account of their intolerance 
and spirit of exclusion. 

We have, then, good reason to mourn sincerely 
for Marcus Aurelius. Under him philosophy 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 169 

reigned. One moment, thanks to him, the world 
was governed by the best and greatest man of his 
age. Frightful decadences followed ; but the little 
casket which contained the '^ Thoughts" on the 
banks of the Granicus was saved. From it came 
forth that incomparable book in which Epictetus 
was surpassed, that Evangel of those who believe 
not in the supernatural, which has not been com- 
prehended until our day. Veritable, eternal Evan- 
gel, the book of " Thoughts," which will never 
grow old, because it asserts no dogma. The virtue 
of Marcus Aurelius, like our own, rests upon rea- 
son, upon nature. St. Louis was a very virtuous 
man, because he was a Christian : Marcus Au- 
relius was the most godly of men, not because he 
was a Pagan, but because he was a gifted man. 
He was the honor of human nature, and not of an 
established religion. Science may yet destroy, in 
appearance, God and the immortal soul ; but the 
book of the '^ Thoughts " will still remain young 
with life and truth. 

The religion of Marcus Aurelius is the absolute 
religion, that which results from the simple fact 
of a high moral conscience placed face to face with 
the universe. It is of no race, neither of any 
country. No revolution, no change, no discovery^ 
will have power to affect it. 



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